Red and Black
by Adi88
Summary: /Dying is a messy business, Kurama. I only went where it was easiest to go./ The Return of Karasu kind of thing. Involves characters from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
1. Red and Black

AN: I know, cardinal sin - the lyrics are probably as long as the actual text. But it's just a prologue, damnit. Later there are all sorts of exiting things, things I've come up with myself - I'm calling them 'plot' and 'dialogue' until I come up with something better.

Anyway, yes. Long haul. Utterly illogical crossover with Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Takes place mainly in dreams, because I need to work on doing that and having a plot at the same time - advancing said plot in dreams, which is a lot harder than it may sound, what with trying to keep them semi-dream like, in the not making sense kind of way.

And, it being me, every chance I have to make a reference to Joss Whedon, Terry Pratchett, or, obviously, Neil Gaiman… it's in there.

Dedication: Darn Katia-darling, making me watch YYH and get all obsessed. Darn Shinju-my-love, feeding the addiction once it started.

Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho is not mine. None of the Endless are mine. The song "Red and Black" is not mine - it's… from Les Miserables, which is by a whole host of people by the time you get the English version. Lovely show.

* * *

The color of the world  
Is changing day by day...

Red - the blood of angry men  
Black - the dark of ages past  
Red - a world about to dawn  
Black - the night that ends at last

Red  
I feel my soul on fire…

* * *

He wasn't anything special.

Oh, I loved him with everything I was. I thought of him with every breath. He was exquisite - life, love, beauty. I thought I would have given up my existence on this earth for just a few moments with him, although fortunately that wasn't necessary. (Well, no, it did turn to be necessary, didn't it?)

So yes, I loved him. But he still wasn't special, because I fall in love all the time. It happens. One falls in love, kills the object of one's affections before they can betray you in one way or another, despairs… moves on. It was getting a bit old, honestly. With Kurama, I was perhaps not as fully invested I had been last time, or the time before that. And then he killed me. That… changed things. I suspect he meant it to end them. Unfortunately for him, it did the opposite. If I'd known how alive dying would make me feel, I would have done it long ago. The depth of my feelings for him now are incomparable to anything I'd felt while alive.

I would have expected it all to be rather useless, though, since the living and dead don't tend to interact overmuch in my experience. That, though, is the best part.

I'm very close to him, and he doesn't even see it.

* * *

…Black

My world if she's not there

Red  
The color of Desire  
Black  
The color of Despair

Red - the blood of angry men  
Black - the dark of ages past  
Red - a world about to dawn  
Black - the night that ends at last

* * *

There. Theoretically titillating. Please, please do review! …Not there's much to review, there… Yeah. 


	2. Destiny

AN: All right, enough stalling. I've had this entire thing written for ages, I just keep not doing anything with it, thinking I'll fine-tune it and not doing that… so here goes. I'll be more reliable from now on.

Just one note: Kurama is going to be first-person narrating for his bits for one reason only: I couldn't handle the pronouns any longer. There's him, there's Karasu, there's the mainly-male Tantei, and half of the Endless are guys. (Which is compounded by the fact that I don't use their names in narration, because I'm an idiot and it's fun. So, while it's technically "I"-ness, we are not privy to his every thought, or even most of his thoughts. Partially because I don't even know what the hell he's thinking.) 

Dedication and Disclaimer in prologue. 

* * *

Chapter One 

Shiori set the bowl of popcorn down on the coffee table and watched her son's green eyes flicker and re-focus, jumping from his textbook to the bowl, and then to her own brown ones. 

He smiled, one of the bemused ones that made her feel so much better for their fallibility (and maybe, if she could have thought that way, never looked quite right on his face). "What's the occasion?" 

"Does a mother need a reason to spoil her son?" She reached over, beaming, to pat Shuuichi's head, and let her fingers linger just because he was here again, finally, to touch. And because he, unlike the teenage sons of so many of her friends, would still let himself be touched. (What she did not think was of Araki-san, who had an adopted daughter who was the child every mother dreamed of having, and who still had once said to Shiori, "I'm not complaining, it's just that… she acts as if she owes me something. As if she can't get angry because if she isn't, well, perfect… then she doesn't deserve me. It doesn't make sense, does it - I should be happy. She's very respectful. It's just that it's almost like living with an acquaintance, not family.") 

"Mother? Are you feeling alright?" 

Shiori realized her fingers were still tangled in Shuuchi's hair, and laughed, drawing back. "I drifted away. You've been studying since you got back from your trip - aren't you tired?" 

"Not terribly." He smiled ruefully. "I suppose I didn't keep up very well while I was gone. I simply need to do a bit of catching up." 

"Yes…" Shiori looked at the books. "A bit." 

"Perhaps more than, then. Yusuke and Kuwabara are rather hard to ignore." 

"Oh, yes." She brightened. Those two were such nice boys. Rough diamonds, certainly, but… 

"So you three had fun?" 

"Of course." A strange look, and she didn't comment, and he didn't say anything more. 

"It's a pity the phones were down." 

"I am sorry about that. I'm afraid we were rather in the middle of nowhere." 

"It's not your fault, darling." She moved around to sink down on the other side of the couch. "I'm pleased you have such good friends." _Finally. _She reached for the remote control for something to look at other than him. "Do you suppose you'll be going on more of these trips?" 

He hesitated. "It seems likely. The chess teams do travel a fair bit."

"And this team is what you want to be on? It seems to have taken so much out of you." She reached with her free hand for his. He gave it, fingers weaving through hers. 

His hands were bigger than hers, she realized. Of course, they would be. He was taller than she now. She just hadn't noticed. "I wish I could still say I knew what was best for you. Tell you whether this… club is a good idea." Her hair swung as she shook her head. "But you're not a little boy any longer. And it's not as if you won't come back." 

His fingers didn't tighten in hers, and his face didn't tense, and absolutely nothing about him indicated anything but utter sincerity as he laughed and flipped his book closed, attention leaving his text completely. "You worry too much." 

"I still wish you were small enough for me to tell you what to do," she mourned playfully, freeing her hand from his and running her fingers through his hair again. "You've never been gone for so long at a stretch, and now you'll pay the price in my maternal overreaction," she chuckled. Her brow creased as her fingers caught; some of his hair was… burned? A few locks were singed off near his shoulders. "Well, you had rambunctious fun," she tsked. "But you should take better care of your hair." 

"What?"

Shiori withdrew her hands, startled when he stiffened and leaned back. "Shuuchi-kun, you know the rule. You can wear it as long as you like so long as you're responsible about it. I'm not going to ask who was smoking, or what have you, but…" she laughed, catching herself. "There I go. I suppose at fifteen I should just be glad you're not dying it blue." 

And then he dismissed the book to join the others on the table, moving to rest his head on her shoulder. "You're right." He took the remote, dragging the popcorn over onto her lap. "You know, I think I've done about as much studying as I'm going to tonight." 

"Are you sure?" she queried, turning to put her arms around him. No matter how tall he grew, he always felt so small like this - as if it was just moments ago when he had been safe inside her and nothing could hurt him. He still smelled the same as he had when he was just a baby, a small piece of her waiting to be his own person (with those eyes that said he'd never been anything else). 

"Yes, the rest can wait." He turned on the TV, flicking for their channel, one they hadn't stayed up watching in… years. Old films asking What's it all about, really, when you get right down to it? and never giving a satisfactory answer. 

* * *

The movie seemed awfully familiar, and I flicked through the part of my mind dedicated to these nights. Yes, we'd seen it before. Everyone died before the end, except the fetching young woman who was drifting through the film on the brink of death. Consumption, maybe, seeing as she was forever in her nightgown. It was all deeply unimportant, but then, one could make a case for memorizing the year that Kido Takayoshi and Saigo Takamori challenged the shogunate being deeply unimportant, in the broader scheme of things. It was 1866. 

I wished I had not had to leave, and hoped this is enough to make her feel… 

I had planned on my staying being a support, not a burden. This could prove problematic. And, Idun's Box aside, I could not make things right for her by turning back time. 

But I could do this. 

So I leaned back and let my eyes close. It was true that I was tired, and as riveting as the performances might be, it was late and I knew how this ended. 

Shiori, as desensitized as I to the plight of mortals faced with The Tough Questions, was singing one of her lullabies: 

"She has a lovely child, lovely child; that's 

Why she's cawing up there…" 

Her voice danced in and out of that croaking onscreen, until they'd woven together so thoroughly that it was impossible to tell them apart. Funny, it only being a few minutes into the movie - should we have gotten to the ghosts yet? 

I opened my eyes, curious, and her hair was hanging over my shoulder. It slid as I watched, moving down almost to my waist, much longer than Shiori's, and the song twisted with it. 

"I will dress your eyelids  
With dimes upon your eyes  
Laying close to water  
Green your grave will rise…" 

The skeletal fingers tracing a path up my arms were drawing blood with their long nails, and even as I jumped up - cursing myself for falling asleep, that film for its hair fixation, and Karasu for in general being himself - I couldn't help thinking _Wouldn't Freud be amused… _

I, however, had less to laugh at. 

The attic was a mess. Cobwebs, boxes, shadowy recesses, trunks. Extremely disordered. Most of all there was the plantlife - mold, vines, flowers, saplings. Some of them dying, some dead, most alive, and the wet, green smell makes what would be dry and dusty seem alive. It should have been comforting. They should all have been potential weapons. 

Regardless…

"You don't belong here. These are mine." 

Karasu looked up with a raised eyebrow, as if he hadn't noticed I was there. He was going through a trunk, with framed pictures, teacups, and sharp metal objects scattered around him. 

"But I _am_ here. As for these being yours… so am I." He shrugged, and might have come across as honestly casual if it hadn't been for his eyes. 

"No." The room creaked as frost crackled across it, wood warping and plants shrinking back. Petals blackened and fell. "This place is not for you." 

Karasu held up a hand, watching it turn blue with ice, and closed his fingers. The frost shattered, his hand bled, but the bits fell to the ground without doing anything permanent, anything that mattered. "That doesn't matter, Kurama. You must know that." He looked at me, amethyst eyes narrowing with amusement. He wasn't wearing his mask, but he might as well have been - he wasn't making any real expressions. I'd have to be content with his eyes. "Don't you have places to be?" he asked. 

Shiori was putting a kettle on for tea, a cutting board next to her. 

"Get _out_!" I grabbed for my rose, slamming energy through it and lashing out rather less cleanly than I might have liked. 

He caught the end of the whip. Just grabbed it, yanking it once, and I didn't let go - I stumbled closer along the linoleum floor. "No," he murmured, releasing his end and flexing his fingers again. I could see the small bones, like a bird's. "That isn't how it works here, is it." 

"Shuuchi," Shiori called over her shoulder. "Supper's ready." 

I froze, turning to go towards her, and Karasu's (perfectly hale and whole) hand closed on my arm. "She didn't call you," he whispered. There was a dull, throbbing heat flowing from his hand, and I wrenched away just before the explosion went off. 

Shiori sat at the table with a mockery of a human being, a body of ice, roses for hair and leaves for eyes. 

"You know… all she wants is to see you." 

"No," I said. "She doesn't." 

"So you just wait for them to decay?" 

"Rather than destroy them pointlessly, when I could treasure the time I have left?" I smirked. "Yes." 

_I stand beside the hospital bed as the bag of bones and meat releases its last breath and sets itself free, and crush the changeling to dirty, melting water, and when I pull back the curtain there's nothing real to stop me. There never was. Gold made of dead leaves. _

I turned on Karasu. "Don't do that again." 

He stopped a hand reaching for me, spreading his arms innocently instead. "I didn't." 

Very slowly, I looked over my shoulder. 

The man appeared to be a sort of Western monk, with his brown robes, but I was quite certain most of them don't have books chained to their wrists. He was very tall, taller even than Karasu, and the room distorted around that book, around him, as if it couldn't hold them. The human mind can only hold so much reality, after all. 

"You will be shown now," he said. It sounded like reading - the words black, dropped on white, rustling paper. "It will frighten you, and you will be angry. But you will see." 

* * *

Toguro throws him back to the ground beside Bui… 

Yusuke brushes against me in the street… 

Why me, why then, why didn't I… 

I am Karasu. I am holding my sister's hand for the last time, with my parents' bodies nearby, and then I set a bomb off against her chest and her eyes close. 

I am Kurama. This human woman is holding me and asking me if I am all right, and she is the one bleeding, and if it weren't for me she would never have… 

I am about to fight Karasu, and I really cannot fathom why. I have no idea why he has the effect on me that he does, but the fact remains that I will not be at my best against him, and I cannot afford to lose a match at this point. Kuwabara just offered, and while he would not win, nor would he die - he's easy to underestimate. All I have to do is say something. 

I don't. I jump into the ring. 

I am Karasu. I am at the Dark Tournament, and I really cannot fathom why. I could have run. I could have… 

… but I didn't. And the redhead should provide at least temporary amusement now that I am here. I'm not (ever) going anywhere, and in a few weeks I will look back at this and laugh as my life drains away with each pump of my heart. 

* * *

My lips curled back in a snarl, and I whipped around to face the man fully, feet sliding on the pristine floor. "He went willingly to his destiny. I don't want him. Take him with you." 

"No more than any other. There is no escape to be had." That face was an inversion of Karasu's - the lower portion just visible in the cowl, eyes always hidden. It shook now, indifferent. "He is not mine. He will stay another night." And then he was gone. 

I turned back instinctively, because that is what one does when there is an enemy behind one. 

Perhaps trying to foist Karasu off in front of him was not the best plan I had ever essayed, though it seemed a (the only) plausible option a moment ago. 

He walked toward me and I couldn't move. 

And then I woke up, gasping for air that didn't seem to be there. Onscreen, Kayako croaked. 

* * *

I beg reviews! I feed on them, and then float away on them like a balloon. God I need sleep. 

Three more things: 1) Yes, that movie did morph into _The Grudge _as soon as he fell asleep, because dreams are illogical and Adi can do as she pleases. 

2) The songs are… darn. Okay, I can't find the title of the first one any longer, but it's a real Japanese lullaby - "The Crow Child", or "The Crow's Lullaby" or something. It was popular a decade or so back, and I made my poor sister-in-law find me a translation. The other one is "You'll Not Feel the Drowning" by the Decembrists, who for the purposes of this fic do not exist, because their songs are apparently lullabies over in Makai. 

3) I wanted to give the Endless all cool things to distinguish their speech, to approach what they have in the comics. But then I figured that it might just look silly, and also FF.N would screw it into the ground, so… just imagine the cool. I think Destiny's dialogue was going to be underlined. 


	3. Death

AN: …Never mind. I will not be better. I just need to accept that about myself and move on. However, now that finals are over, it may be that I will yank myself together enough to finish posting this poor lonely thing.

Anyway, standard disclaimers apply. _YYH_ is not mine, nor is _Sandman_. None of assorted _Buffy/Angel/Bones/Pirates of the Caribbean _references are either. (I'd recently watched the latter two when I wrote this, and I write mushroom-style.) Also, I could _not _resist, so Death (in the Pratchettian sense, not just the Gaimanian) is not mine either.

Also not mine (regrettably. yet.): Windswift. Since she is seven flavors of awesome and her fics are my personal fanon in _YYH_, Kurama's thing about tying shoes? Hers. To be found in "The Ties That Bind". Such a good story…

* * *

Chapter Two

"Hello, Kurama! You wanted to see me?!" Botan called, waving merrily from her perch on the bench outside the high school attended by this particular one of her ex-con, ex-demon, pseudo-detective charges. At least Kuwabara and Yusuke were nominally human… although the only real difference that seemed to make was to lower their maturity levels, in comparison to Kurama's and Hiei's, by a very large number.

"Ah, yes, Botan," he replied, wincing slightly and glancing over his shoulder. "Thank you for coming on such short notice. But Shuuchi here, please."

"Right." Botan gave a moue of apology. "At least I didn't go in looking for you, though! It's so much easier with Yusuke - he's always on the roof. I don't think he knows what going to class is like, except from what Keiko tells him."

"While I kept you waiting until lunch hour while I reacquainted myself. I apologize." He set down his bag beside her, carefully placing it so that everything inside come to rest without mashing anything else. She could imagine all the neat outlines perching. She'd bet the corners of his books weren't even crinkled.

"What did you want to see me _about_?" She pressed after his moment of contemplative silence stretched out too far for her. He was a sweet kid/demon, and he had saved the world, and she would flatter herself (and him) with the idea that they were firm friends. But she had ferrying to do.

"Well… not to put too fine I point on it, I had a bad dream."

Botan scratched her head. "…I'm sorry?"

"Karasu featured prominently -"

"Ooh, that _creep_! If you hadn't killed him, I would have! Perverse fiend." She stopped, frowning. "You know, he was very disturbing, and if you want to talk to someone about it, I'm all ears. I can be extremely comforting. And there's no shame in someone who wants to keep your head on a stick and keeps talking about how sad killing you is going to make him freaking you out, so don't say a word about it being embarrassing!"

"- but that isn't what bothered me, specifically," Kurama finished, smiling. His fingers smoothed the strap of his book bag over and over, and there was nothing wrong with it to begin with. "I don't think it's his ghost, and I suppose a nightmare or two isn't entirely unexpected."

"Oh." Botan switched gears with the ease of a very nice car. "If you think it was a normal nightmare, and you aren't having an emotional breakdown, what can I do?"

"I'm... not entirely sure it was a 'normal nightmare.' " He released the flayed-smooth strap carefully. "Karasu isn't what bothered me. There was someone else in the dream, and he wasn't… mine, if that makes sense."

Botan winced apologetically. "Not really."

Kurama pushed his bangs back. "It was more of a feeling than anything else, but… For one thing, he was nothing I'd seen before. Everything else made comparative sense - things I've witnessed or could infer, or would be expected to imagine. This other person didn't have any basis." Botan nodded, and he paused. "My head on a stick?"  
"Well… pike." She winked, trying to seem cheerful and comforting at once without looking like she was being comforting. "I may be getting my psycho stalkers confused. The point is, I think I know what you mean, but I still don't know what you want me to do."

"I realize that, with the Tournament, paperwork in the Spirit World is probably a bit backlogged," he said delicately, "and despite Koenma's infinite mercy, he is sometimes overwhelmed."

"At least you didn't make a crack about his tender age."  
"It took a great deal of self-control. My request is that you… check and make sure. I just want to know for a fact that Karasu went on to wherever he belongs. For my own private amusement."

"Because you're not being haunted," Botan pressed.

"No." He smiled innocently. "You know me. I like to hedge my bets."

"Well, of course I will! Leave it all to me." She sighed, watching his hands start in on his helpless shoulder strap again. "Did he get to you that badly?" she asked sympathetically.

"I beg your pardon?"

_Right. Boys. _Botan huffed out a more annoyed breath, springing to her feet with a fist in the air, startling Kurama into leaning back. "Never mind! Just remember that your life is your own -"

"Except when it's Koenma's," he pointed out dryly.

" - and you should live it! Go out with a friend, read a book, start a hobby!"  
"I'll put all three at the top of my list," he said, with perhaps a trace of irony, and then, sincerely, "Thank you, Botan." He went to return to school grounds (off which, she realized, he most assuredly should not be), lifting his bag with thoughtless grace. The books didn't even know they were being moved. Inasmuch as books knew anything.

"Oh, and…" he paused, glancing over his shoulder with a friendly smile that made her blood backtrack, "if you go to any of the others over this, your garden will abruptly produce a large variety of very lovely plants which happen to prefer ferry girls to photosynthesis." He turned to face her properly. "I do not have a problem with asking for help when it's needed. As of yet, there simply is no call to alarm them."

Botan glared. She was certain her subordinates should not be able to threaten her. Since that never seemed to stop them, she said, "Whatever you want. It's your funeral."

Kurama laughed, returning to his sneaking back into school by walking as if he were being paid to grace it with his presence. "No, not that easily."

* * *

I sat on the edge of my bed and looked reluctantly at my pillow. It was past midnight, and I really needed get some sleep, or I'd look tired tomorrow and Shiori will worry. Normally, I would have her placated by now, but at fifteen it was harder to dismiss your nightmares as the after-effects of a clichéd horror flick, especially as that channel did not start showing them until after midnight; when I fell asleep, I had no way of knowing what would be on. Waking up like a fish thrown on land like that halfway through _The Grudge _did nothing to make her relax.

And one nightmare was not going to put me off of my semi-routine normal, healthy, what-every-mother-wants-for-her-child eight hours. The same way one transparent scare tactic was not going to turn me into a fighter so pathetic he was incapable of hitting someone standing right behind him.

More to the point, I supposed, there wasn't anything much left to keep me awake.

Still, I rose and went into the wash room, cleaning my face and hands, and on general principle brushing my teeth in case they've magically become dirty in the last few hours (I never did have a late night snack, as the only appealing thing left was ice cream and I hated to deprive Hiei).

I started to brush my hair, and then left it. There really was nothing left to do but sleep, and be content with four-odd hours. I drifted off to the sound of humming.

"Go to sleep now, little ugly

Go to sleep now, you little fool

Forty winkings in the belfry

You'll not feel the drowning

You'll not feel the drowning…"

I was kneeling in the attic, a chalk circle drawn around me, and I checked automatically for any kind of symbols, candles, bodily fluids, or other indicators of ritual. Kuronue was always making such messes with those things…

But there was nothing. It was mine.

Karasu was on his knees, turning over an empty red glass bottle about the size of one of his fingers in one hand, stroking the lock of a chest with the other. "You have such lovely toys, Kurama," he mused. "It's a pity you keep them locked away. I'd wager even you don't know where you keep half your things. I put mine on shelves, you know, not in all these boxes."

"That's an opinion that you would have."

He settled back on his heels, then stood, head to one side. "Do you know why you're so afraid of me? Why every time I come near you, I am graced with the pretty sound a heart makes when it's going much too fast?"

"I could list several very plausible reasons."

"All of them wrong." He stepped up to the edge of the circle, and I watched one black boot smudging the white grains. In the tone of one illuminating the meaning of life itself, he explained, "This won't stop me."

I looked into his face, finally. "You haven't crossed it yet."

"I'd rather you did." The corner of his eyes crinkled as if he were smiling, and the rest of his face didn't move. He might as well have been wearing that mask. "You killed me, you know, and this" he waved long fingers like what's left when a tiger's paws have rotted and left nothing but bone and claw, "doesn't exist."

"Said the spider to the fly," I scoffed, eyeing limbs that might as well belong to a spider, for all their angularity. And he did seem to be adept at spinning webs. I could learn something. Or teach something…

"Now that you mention it…" Who needed to smile when they can use that tone? It had legs and walked up and down my spine. "Let's go somewhere more comfortable."

"_No_." The room decayed over centuries in the blink of an eye, and then was what it had started as again. "We do this my way. There are always rules. What do you want?"

"A loaded question," he noted, eyes narrowed.

"You can hardly wish to stay here. Wouldn't it be torture, watching me die of old age or at the hands of another?"

"Oh, Kurama," he sighed. "You won't grow old. Think what you do for a living, and then of your track record. As for the other… I've already killed you once, or I wouldn't be here. My bond with you is far beyond what any other will ever lay claim to. I admit that your… dalliances disturb me, but they always pass."

I opened my mouth and he wasn't there. I looked around, fighting déjà vu, and saw nothing right up until fingers wrapped around my wrists from behind, curling as if they were double-jointed and yanking me back against a narrow, bone-hard chest.

"I, on the other hand," he began, breath on my neck -

"That," said a cheerful, firm, and feminine voice (which reminded me of Botan without actually sounding like her), "is _quite_ enough" we were standing in a hallway "of that."

The hallway was longer than made sense. There are spatial rules, and this place was bending them. It was also black, possibly glass given its mirror-like qualities. I watched our reflections stretch and lump on the floor, the walls - I couldn't lose track of him here.

Still, I glared at him, standing safely (illusions are important) three paces away. "Is this yours?"

"No." His eyes smiled. "But it could have been. You're catching on."

I bit my tongue and walked away, opening the first door my hand met. Perhaps not wise, but what I'd done, now…

Inside was a room that made the hallway look like a formula for spatial reality. My eyes insisted that I was looking at a space which was infinite in the truest, most mind-bending concept of the word, within which was suspended a small pool of light with a room under it. My brain decided that this was impossible, dismissed it, and moved on to the room right in front of me/suspended light years away and still visible.

A desk, a chair, a man sitting in the chair. The chair and desk looked somehow too real and plastic both at once, and the man was a skeleton.

He - it? - looked up from the quill scratching across his parchment. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE, MORTAL, he said.

His words slammed into my head like sarcophagus lids crunching closed, not bothering with my ears.

"So sorry," I replied. "My mistake."

TRY THREE DOORS DOWN, THEN SECOND TO THE RIGHT, he added helpfully.

"We will. Thank you." Karasu, this time, and he reached over my head and swung the door shut in my face. I was standing with the roughly two inches of space between him and the door, and his lips brushed my ear as he remonstrated, "That happened because you didn't concentrate." He pushed the door open again.

It was… different. A messy, white living room with a ratty couch, scattered clothes, and several goldfish swimming contentedly in their bowl. On the couch was a woman, shorter than I, paler than her walls, with a mop of black hair and a smile that made me feel at home and in love.  
"Hey, guys," she said. "You take a wrong turn?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well," she answered, swinging her legs down from where they were draped over the arm of the chair, "everyone does. But they all find me again eventually." She stood, stretching, casual black clothes shifting on her slight frame. Leaving her arms above her head, she looked at us curiously. "Usually not here, though, I have to say. What's up?"

"I am not entirely positive," I admitted, "but I believe I have an incorporeal stalker." I stretched my hand out, offering her a rose, and she took it with an absurdly pleased grin.

"Aw, aren't you the sweetest thing! Now, let me see… what can I give you…?"

"There's really no need," I protested, nonplussed, as she rummaged through a pile of clothes. They were all black.

"Oh, there're rules," she responded offhandedly.

"There are always," Karasu added, fingers winding in my hair, "rules." Leaning closer, he added under his breath (which smelled of something coppery and red and rotting), "You and cheerful grim reapers - I've had enough of that, Kurama. That ferry girl isn't going to be able to help any more than Koenma's pathetic excuse for a detective squad."

"Hey!" The woman snapped her fingers. "_Not_ in my house, mister."

Karasu stepped back, my hair unwinding, looking as surprised as I felt and not nearly as relieved.

"That's better." She grinned, and Karasu couldn't help relaxing, and I couldn't help sneering at him. "Here you are." Her hand opened over mine, and a necklace dropped into my palm - a silver chain, on which dangled a small circle cut by a Greek cross.

I held it skeptically, and glanced at Karasu. "It's a necklace."

"Yes."

"Is the necklace going to help?"

Her eyebrows rose. "If you don't want it, I'll take it back."

"No, thank you." I dropped it over my head.

"Then it helps," she answered, smiling again.

"A cross to fend off the vampire," I murmured, fingering it. Her mouth twisted. "You don't know him," I protested.

"Yes." Her words settled like more than sarcophagus lids; like mausoleums. Like the sound of the Roman Empire collapsing. Her face looked older than time, and I remembered that it was. "I do. I know everybody." Then her smile was casual again. "Speaking of which, I've been seeing an awful lot of you lately, Kurama. Fourteen years with hardly a note, and then boom - an orchestra. What's up with that, kiddo?"

"I have places to be…" It was a weak protest.

Karasu's eyes narrowed at her. "You have not been there. I would have noticed; I've been looking."

"You weren't really, you know - when people look for me, they tend to find me. I'm very timely. Anyway, you only get to see me twice. Usually." She reached out and tapped his chest sternly. "You weren't looking, but you sent an awful lot of other people my way."

"Exactly," I bit off.

"Mm." Her fingers twined together and she dropped back onto the couch, resting her chin in the basket they make. "This isn't going to work very well at this rate, long-haul speaking. Both of you tell a secret, okay?"

I said flippantly, "I have no idea how to tie shoes."

"I did not kill my parents."

"Just your sister and everyone else you ever loved."

His eyes lit up like a child's. "Not _yet_…"

I looked to the woman. "He is dead. I don't want him. Take him with you."

She sighed, standing slowly with her hands braced on her thighs. "He's not alive," she acquiesced, "but he's not dead, either. I can't help." Her head shook, earrings weaving and the ankh on her necklace shimmering, her eyes infinitely sad. "He's not mine. He'll stay another night."

- and stirring my hair. He locked my wrists to opposing shoulders, rendering my arms useless, and kneeling is not the position from which to kick, and I couldn't think…

"Just think," Karasu mused conversationally, "she's what binds us together. Now, is that so bad?"

"She's not."

He leaned back against the wall, pulling me with him, almost into his lap. "You know, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't let me in."

"I think I'd remember." I tried jerking away, and he closed his hands more tightly, until the bones in my wrists ground together. _He's stronger. Fine. You knew that. Another tactic. _I threw my weight forward, trying to force him over my shoulder, but there was no momentum. It didn't even phase him.

"Who were you thinking of, when you died? You _were_ clinically dead, you know - I killed you, if only for a moment. So what were your last thoughts of? Kuronue, who died for you? Yomi, who - perhaps the harder task - lived for you? Your little friends, any one of whom would have killed me for you? Dying is a bit confusing, Kurama - I only went where it was easiest to go. There was a beacon calling me to you, and it was not of my making."

_He talks too much. _

His grip had loosened, and I slammed an elbow back into his ribs, in what should have been enough of a blow to knock the breath from him, albeit not an opportunely aimed one. It didn't.

He grabbed my wrist again, and I heard it crack, though I felt nothing. Still my hand dangled unresponsive and useless as he grabbed the chain of the necklace, dragging back.

If I couldn't feel pain, dream-reason dictated that I not be able to suffocate (maybe? But then, if bones could break…). But my head pounded, black spots dance in front of my eyes, my vision swam.

Karasu was weaving together two locks of hair, one red, one black, with his free hand. My remaining functioning fingers scrabbled at the chain cutting off my air like a rat on a wheel. All I could see was the blood-red and obsidian-black, weaving in and out.

I smiled, triumphantly, and said (without actually saying it because I was chocking to death and that would be impossible) "You're just the same."

He pushed me forward, releasing my neck and hair, and I choked on the air that was suddenly too available and not nearly enough.

And I woke up.

* * *

AN: All hail the indomitable Death! She is peach-keen. And the guy-one is awesome too. They should rule the world together with Susan; it would be cool.

Also, all hail reviews, because they make me happy. And remind me that, no really, I have to update because the computer - marvelous as it is - will not attend to these things on its own.


	4. Dream

AN: Oh, god, the internet has made me so paranoid about my vocabulary. Everyone here knows the dictionary definition of "cum", right? I had to use it, but I do not mean the sexual slang thing, okay?

Also, I swear on all that's holy that I went through and did the manga chapters/original Sandman chapters math on this. I can no longer find my work, but I trust the notes I still have, which amount to, "Morpheus is still a royal jerk. _Way_ pre-Daniel."

With no further ado…

* * *

Chapter Three

Never let it be said that Botan, ferry girl of the Spirit World, was anything less than brilliant at disguising herself. But if Kurama said one word about her being in schoolgirl's outfit she was going to smack him so hard… On the other hand, he wasn't Yusuke. He could at least pretend to think with his head.

"K - Shuuchi!" He was coming out of a classroom, flanked by one or two young men and women vying for his attention, and managing to distribute it evenly without actually welcoming theirs. When he heard her, he looked up fast enough to get whiplash, did a bit of a double take, and cleared his throat behind his hand. She might have called it an attempt to cover a chuckle if he hadn't wiped it off his face so quickly.

"Botan, good." Breaking free of his groupies, he walked over to her quickly, indicating a nearby stairwell. "What did you find?"

He already knew, she could hear it. A sort of empty note behind his calm.

Making sure the door was closed behind them, and looking up and down the stairs quickly, she said, "Karasu's soul isn't quite as imprisoned as we might have hoped. I'm sorry, but he wasn't mine to cover, and I suppose he just got lost in the mix up…"

"It's hardly your fault."

"Well! That's the bad news. The other bad news is that we don't actually know where he is. We can't get a reading on him anywhere. The _good_ news is that Koenma is going to dedicate his finest resources to finding the scumbag, his very topmost team -"

"And," Kurama interrupted, "might this top team - out of Koenma's plethora of options - be that which was recently titled Team Uremeshi?"

Botan winced. "Well, if you want to be _technical_…"

"No need. I believe I've found him."

"Really? Where?! You promised you weren't being haunted!"

"Yes, I told the truth." He sounded mildly offended. "I do that now. I am not being haunted as such. I'd call it possession, only -"

"Kyaaa! Back off, perverted maniac!" Botan materialized her oar and swept it down towards his head as hard as she could.

Kurama caught it, raising an eyebrow. "- I am in complete control of my faculties. He's just in my head."

"Oh." Chagrined, Botan rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, dismissing her oar. "Sorry."

"That's fine. Or it will be when I can feel my fingers again."

"Wait, how do I know you're not lying?" She poked his chest suspiciously. "You could be Karasu in Kurama's body pretending to be Kurama talking about Karasu."

"If that were the case, I would have killed you by now. At the very least I would be dressed in black."

Mollified, Botan nodded. "I suppose you were telling the truth."

"I do that quite a lot, actually." Kurama smiled. "Yet people are always surprised."

"Well, yes." Botan _tsk_ed under her breath. "You were the Legendary Youko Kurama for a very long time, you know."

_Don't you believe in mercy? _

_No. _

"Sometimes," she added without thinking, her eyebrows drawing together, "you're just the same."

* * *

To make a long story short, Koenma couldn't help. I went to see him after school, telling Mother I was going to Kuwabara's. Thankfully, she had not seen either Yusuke's or Kuwabara's houses. Nor had she asked to meet their parents.

It felt rather strange not having told her about Hiei, but I hardly thought the two of them meeting would go over well. I'd have to explain away his height, red eyes, and manners, for one thing; for another, he hated her (if in an impersonal, perfunctory sort of way by now). At any rate, keeping a multitude of secrets from her was something I was becoming increasingly adept at.

So I went to see Koenma, and listened to him hem and haw and try to make it plain that none of this was, in any way shape or form, his fault. He could send souls into dreams, yes, but to send anyone else in with Karasu already in residence would be murder. First come, first served - as Yusuke could make Kuwabara and Keiko dream of kissing him (something I would have killed to see, personally - Botan's account was highly amusing, but not nearly as deadly when used as blackmail as having born witness would be) Karasu was in charge now. No one else would stand a chance.

At least I knew that.

However, that was all beside the point - I had enough people in my head. I could rid myself of this one. I just had to play along for long enough. I'd reacted poorly to being unable to fend him off physically, but it only meant I'd have to be nastier than I'd wanted to be, and that… was doable.

"Forget you once had sweethearts  
They've forgotten you  
Think you not on parents  
They've forgotten too…"

I picked up the bag of marbles he'd left lying in the dust and mold of the floor, forget-me-nots creeping over them. All of them were tiger's eyes.

"As lullabies go," I noted, "that is not incredibly comforting."

"Would you prefer 'Shankill Butchers'? Or 'The Landlord's Daughter,' perhaps?" He'd managed to open that chest. It was filled with crowns, made of everything from solid gold to tinfoil.

"What are they about?"

"Murderers cum bogeymen and rape, respectively."

I snort disdainfully. "What kind of parents did you have?"

"The kind," he announced, sitting back, holding a tinfoil tiara stuck over with construction-paper gems and tissue for a veil, "who did not sing lullabies." His head tilted like a bird's, eyes sweeping over me. "Are we having a conversation?"

"No. We're just… having _this_." I gestured meaninglessly.

We walked down the linoleum-lined halls of my school, lockers lining the walls. They were all opened; clothes, books, and keepsakes trailed out. We reached the stairs up to the library, divided by a railing, and when he took the left, I kept to the right side of it.

Only then he was at the top, glancing back in amusement, and somehow I didn't seem to be getting any farther.

"Those are for going down," he explained, shaking his head. His hair twisted and coiled as if underwater.

I switched sides. The cheap double doors swung open at a touch.

_If he can work the damn stairs better, this is going to be tricky. _

The library stretched forever. The shelves disappeared towards a ceiling I wouldn't wager much on existing, and in every direction the stacks went on and on. Stairways spiraled up, supported by nothing, into the maze of whispering paper above us.

"You do not belong here."

At the voice, which came from everywhere at once, my gaze snapped back to the roaring fire and the armchair in front of it for no good reason. A man sat in its red embrace, brooding. He resembled his older sister - paler than Karasu, dressed all in black, and with a mop of unruly black hair. When he stood, he was between his brother's and sister's heights, and I would have to tilt my head back to look him in the face if he were closer.

"There was no one to ask for directions." He looked at me, and my stomach twisted - he had no eyes, only holes into forever with stars in, and they pulled. I stepped back involuntarily and Karasu put a hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me. Between that and the stairs, I acted unwisely. I said snidely with a gesture to their matching skin, clothes, and hair, "Honestly, why don't you want to say with them? You fit right in."

Karasu met my eyes and I realized I'd made a mistake as he leaned back against a Corinthian pillar, folding his arms too casually. "I have places to be."

I frowned at the pillar. "That doesn't belong there..."

"Why not find another?" He was frowning at Karasu, but it wasn't the freezing look I had just garnered, or the complete dismissal I was receiving now. More as if he were puzzled.

"He killed me."

"Then this is vengeance."

"No. This is love. He is next, and last, and always."

"And uninterested." Fact, not disapproval.

Karasu smiled. It was not his smile. I'd never seen his, true. There was the mask, and then that maniacal laughter. Then there had been this, the strange unanimatedness of his lower face. But I knew how he would smile, and this toothy, wholesome, all-American grin was not it.

"So would you help me interest him, my Lord?"

I wrapped my fingers around the cross. "Not even dreams could do that," I said, perhaps a bit spitefully and certainly not prudently, though I did not imagine it could damage my case much further. His judgments are quick.

His eyelids narrowed over those holes into watching-nothing, but his gaze caught on the glint of silver in my hand and he only said, "I believe you, too, have a request?"

"Lord Shifter… he is a dream. I don't want him. Take him with you."

"He lives in them, true, but he is not one." He certainly didn't smile, but there was something vindictive about the turn of his lips. "He is not mine. He will stay another night." He looked at Karasu, and opened his hand. Karasu closed his own.

Then the man waved his arm and we were back in the attic.

Karasu fit a black ring shaped like a crown onto one of his fingers, and reached out to stroke my cheek. I moved back half as far as I'd meant to, and found I can't move any longer.

"That was… educational." Karasu reached out again, tracing my face slowly, expression close to frank wonder. It was something like the face of a lover who can't believe he's been so very lucky, something like worship, and it would be nice (useful) if it didn't make my eyes burn and teeth grind when his hand dipped to my throat.

He leant in, pulling a lock of hair over my shoulder. "I believe," he whispered, "things have just gotten more interesting."

And then I woke up shivering.

* * *

AN: Okay, if that whole Dream-Karasu thing made no sense whatsoever: Karasu was playing into Morpheus's memories of/regrets for the Corinthian. Dream does seem to really care about the Corinthian, inasmuch as he's capable of it (which does not preclude unmaking, obviously), so I figured it could color his actions to a have psychopath with a thing for pretty boys and a big grin hanging around. Because otherwise, he would have toasted Karasu's ass for being in his realm, and then we should have no story.

And on hands and knees, I beg reviews, kind people…


	5. Destruction

AN: Excuse me while I boogey down, because LynLin, she of "Naturally" (in the _Yu-Gi-Oh! _section) has alerted this story and that makes me sort of want to. I don't know. Proclaim that fact in the author-notes, because dude, "Naturally."

So then I bethought myself to actually update. And really, this whole thing is written, but now I'm changing it as I go to make for the ending, which I don't really know any longer because I don't like the one I have any more. We'll see.

Dedication and Disclaimer in the prologue. On with the show…

* * *

Chapter Four

"Kurama!" When he stopped and turned, Botan bent over, gulping her breath back. He'd gotten quite a head start, but she wanted to see him before he got home. "Have you thought about how to tell the others?"

He walked back to her, waiting politely and ignoring her flushed face, as a gentleman should.

"There is no news to break," he pointed out sedately. "I have a ghost in my head; I'll get rid of it."

Botan glared. "Trust is the key ingredient in a team relationship! You _have_ to tell them!" Winking and pointing skyward, she added, "With that in mind, there's a little get-together at Kuwabara's house this evening, just you boys. Keiko, Shizuru and I are going to have an all-girls' night and leave you to sort out… things. If you don't go, I'm telling them myself and just having the garden taken out." She whimpered slightly. "But it would be a huge burden not to have something green to look at every morning, so don't make me go through with that."

Kurama shook his head, chuckling. "Admirable. Botan, were I seventeen years younger, your virtue would be in dire peril."

Botan blushed, because he was so _very_ pretty, and then punched his shoulder because they were co-workers. "Careful, your boyfriend might overhear us."

"Touché."

* * *

Yusuke leaned back against the wall, alternating between flipping chanels on Kuwabara's lame-ass TV (which, well, the guy had a TV _in his room_, which definitely excused sitting on his bed), sipping his minty-fresh beverage, and watching Kuwabara trying to build a house of cards on the floor between the bed and the blessed idiot box while they chattered.

He was glad Botan had suggested (pummeled him into) this, in retrospect. He'd been thinking about maybe doing some homework, but this beat it out any day. Too bad Hiei had "better things to do than sit around and play at Happy Families with you humans", since that would have meant watching him and Kuwabara get on each other, but he could torment the meathead on his own.

_Flip. _

Two guys, one in a hospital bed. That one said, "She's...one of us now. She's a monster." The other one said, "She's an innocent victim." The first one: "So were we. Once upon a time." The standing one gave up. "Once upon a time."

_Flip. _

Oh, hot blond chick. "Death is not a gift… If I have to kill demons because it makes the world a better place, then I kill demons. But it is not a gift to anybody."

_Flip. _

Explosions. That worked.

"Hey, Kurama." He nudged the redhead sitting next to him on the bed, back very straight as he stared, ostensibly at the TV. Yusuke had a sneaking feeling that he was, in fact, Thinking, which was a damn shame. "Chime in, man."

He blinked and refocused, a polite smile putting in an appearance. "Sorry, what with?"

"Anything! You're like a statue. We humans like to at least pretend to take an interest in our friends. You know, listen to what they're saying… maybe say something back… you can even get these wacky conversations going. It's all about respecting the other participants. Kuwabara and I were talking about sex."

"No we weren't, Uremeshi, _you_ were! There's only one woman in the world for me -"

"Shut up, no one cares." Yusuke poked Kurama's shoulder. "Come on - you're like three thousand years old. You've got to have some good sexcapades to know and tell."

Kurama smirked. "You have no idea."

Yusuke noted that he wasn't the only one who looked hopeful.

"And," the sort-of demon finished, "you never will."

"Well, that's low."

"_I_ don't mind. A gentleman shouldn't kiss and tell anyway," Kuwabara said snootily. "It impugns the ladies' honors."

Kurama gave in and laughed, finally, a real laugh. "Seriously, though," Yusuke continued, "it's so unfair. If Keiko were half as gung-ho over me as Koto was for you, we'd be in bed like that." He snapped his fingers in demonstration.

"Really?" Kurama seemed genuinely interested. "You didn't strike me as ready to commit."

"Man, we need to work on your guy-talk. You don't say that kind of stuff. You agree and say something dirty about Botan."

Kuwabara made an interesting sound of disgust. "You're gross, Uremeshi. I'm a man, and I'm not afraid to confess my manly love. Yukina and I share a bond beyond all your filthy talk about sweaty things."

"Uhhh… sure. And Hiei's in _Guinness _because he's so darn tall. Only reason Yukina hasn't whapped you one is she doesn't know you're harboring perverted delusions." _Oh. _Yusuke brightened as a new weapon presented itself. "Actually - you're pretty much like a stalker, you know that?"

"What the hell, Uremeshi!" Kuwabara's enraged expression was definitely worth not getting to hear him make shorty jokes about Hiei. "I wouldn't ever hurt her! The Pinky String of Love wouldn't work for me if I was a pervert like you!"

"No, no," Yusuke continued, warming to his topic. "You've got this whole relationship going with her in your head and she doesn't know you from Adam. You're taking advantage of her nice… nive… hey, Kurama, what's that word about -?" _Whoa. _

Kuwabara didn't notice, jumping up to point furiously at his arch-rival. "You know what, Uremeshi, that just doesn't mean much coming from a guy who flips up his girlfriend's skirt in public every chance he gets!"

"Shut up, Kuwabara. Look, Kurama's asleep."

As if to prove his point, the redhead slid more to the side, back relaxing from its ramrod stance and keeping right on going until Yusuke put a hand on his shoulder to stop him crumpling completely.

"Wow." Kuwabara looked fascinated. "Hey! He sleeps like a normal person, even when someone doesn't stick a sword in his stomach or blow his legs off."

"Well, yeah, genius." Yusuke stood slowly, carefully tipping his friend down onto his side so he wouldn't be all cramped when he woke up.

Looking at Kuwabara helplessly, he shrugged. "Well… I guess you should call his mom. He looks pretty wiped. Tell her we're gonna have a sleepover."

* * *

I sat up abruptly. "No, don't do that…"

Karasu ran his fingers through my hair.

"The Shankill Butchers ride tonight

You'd better shut your windows tight…"

I stood, moving into the shadows of the attic. "Why do you insist on those songs?" My skin felt cold and clammy. I should not have fallen asleep like that. Not with those two shouting, not that early, not so suddenly.

Karasu laughed and kept singing. His voice was soothing. The tune was soothing. If it weren't for the words…

"They used to be just like you and me

They used to be sweet little boys

But something went terribly askew

Now killing is their only source of joy…"

I spun back to face him. "What did you do?"

He was holding his mask, the light glinting off it and onto his ring, where it was sucked away forever. The room kept growing dimmer. "I haven't needed," he said, holding up the dull silver, "this yet." He smiled just the way I knew he would - like moonlight off the edge of a razor. "Why don't you take me with you?"

I looked over my shoulder at the door, its colored glass panes sullenly shining under the dust. "You shouldn't be able to see that."

His ring gleamed, and the glass stopped. "But now I can smell the blood behind it. Come with me."

I nodded. I knew when to play along.

He held out a hand, and I ignored it. I also knew when not to play along.

Karasu shrugged, and opened a different door, warped wood. It led into a drafty stone hallway, with slit windows looking out on a sea that crashed sullenly against the bottom of the manor, gray sky pressing down on the purple waters. Not the house this room was in. I followed him through it (and stepped in the blood already seeping into the attic from this one).

He was watching me for a reaction, eyes gleaming like a cat's, and I knew not to give him one. I knew these games. And it was important that I believe myself to be losing.

His ring glinted, I remembered Koenma's words; my stomach twisted. I let it show on my face.

"Big sister?" At the childish voice I jumped, spinning around.

A pale, thin, sickly little boy with cold eyes and black hair chopped around his ears. I knew who it was, and turned back to how he was now. His eyes narrowed, but he didn't stop it. This time I was careful not to let anything show.

A young woman looked over her shoulder from her vanity table, set against one wall of the windowless room. "Hm?"

She was beautiful - I knew that, I knew that her face looked like a doll's, all white and red and perfect. And still, she didn't have one - I saw nothing but gray, as if a veil obscured her features, managing to convey expressions.

The little boy walked over to her, holding a china doll with a cold moon of a face and pristine clothes and hair. It looked oddly out of place, and so did the vanity, and his perfectly coiffed sister. Everything else in the room was decaying, a layer of grime eating away at it, leading time as it crumbled the walls and curtains, the musting bed in the corner.

"Would you play with me?"

So many dolls. They were all perfect - no child kept their toys that perfect. They were piled on the bed carefully, an army of empty, lovely masks.

"No, Karasu, I've explained this to you."

He looked away, eyes warming with resentment.

"Karasu…" she sighed, putting one finger beneath his chin and turning it back to her. Her finger was perfectly proportioned to her hand, snow-white, with skin like satin and a nail like a dagger. "Don't pout. You know this. Tell me why I can't play with you."

"Because… you have to be beautiful, and beauty takes effort."

"Yes. Good. And why do I have to be beautiful?"

"So that someone strong will marry you and make Father let you go, and he has to be someone who will let you keep me. But men don't want children that aren't theirs, so you have to be even more beautiful." He recited it by rote, staring at the ceiling.

She smiled beneath the veil. "Good boy." Her not-there face turned to the mirror, her hand reaching for a brush.

"Why does being beautiful help?" The boy kicked at his own feet.

Her eyes narrowed (_black, she has black eyes, why can't I see them?_), one nail briefly touching her lips, (_full and scarlet in her white face - they _are_, this is all wrong_). "Give me your doll." He handed it over, and as soon as her hand closed around it, its face exploded, shrapnel flying; I saw two pieces hit the boy, one in his eye and one his heart; he didn't react, and they left no mark.

When she held it to face him, its visage was a jagged, filthy wreck. One of its glass eyes rolled along the floor.

"There. Now, would you rather play with this doll, or one of the others?"

His face twisted, and he ran to fetch a different one.

His sister nodded approvingly and dropped the broken doll. What was left of its head rolled awkwardly, improbably over the floor and hit my foot. When I looked up, the child's eyes were following it -

- and his eyes met mine -

- His hand closed around my wrist, the real him, and we were walking through a forest of bronze trees.

"It doesn't make any difference," I told him, and sounded defensive easily.

"Maybe," he mused, stopping - and I stopped too, and turned to face him without meaning to, my body disobeying my commands - "it doesn't have to be quite so dramatic. Maybe the little tragedies pile up." He put a hand on my waist, and I lashed out, instinctively reaching for my rose whip.

He was either not being careful or simply didn't care, but either way it was there, and worked. He dodged the strike, though; I sliced cleanly through one of the trees.

It fell with clang that made me cover my ears.

"Foolish," he laughed as my hand closed on nothing. No whip.

We kept walking, and one by one the trees were replaced by silver as we draw farther into the woods.

"You seemed rapt enough once we began," he commented.

I smiled, and knew it was colder than any he'd ever manage. "I would rather you weren't suddenly horrified at your own vulnerability and took it out on me. But I was interested."

"Childhood trauma legitimizes your feelings for me?" It was dangerously close to innocent teasing, or it would be if he were anyone else.

"Pity and loathing do not require further legitimization than what you inspire by your actions here and now." I shrugged, and gambled - not a good idea to let the opponent in on your plan, but it is a good idea to keep them off-balance. "You love your victims. I _know_ mine."

His face twisted, one hand flying out as he said, "Don't assume you're there quite yet, Kurama."

The tree behind me exploded, melting, burning shrapnel slicing through the air, and I ducked instinctively. None of it hit me, so he couldn't be all that angry.

The sound of chopping rang out like bells, and we continued.

When we reached the trees of gold, we could see him instantly. There were a great many of said trees no longer in a position to block anyone's view.

"You don't belong here," he said, bewildered, when he saw us; his voice reverberated through my chest and temples like bass.

"You sound like your brother," I observed. Fortunately, there the resemblance ended. He shared the intimidating height, but was built something like a mountain, as opposed to his brothers' rake-thin forms. He looked open, honest, and chiseled, with bright blue eyes and burning orange hair pulled into a sort of ponytail.

He laughed, a sound as booming as that his axe had been making, without its metallic ring. "Good grief, I hope not! At any rate, I suppose a more accurate way of putting it would be that _I _don't belong here. Old habits, you know."

"Yes." I glanced around pointedly. "So I see."

"What, this?" He twirled the axe effortlessly, muscles sliding in his enormous arms. "No, no - I'm building. A cabin, to be precise."

"Not," Karasu pointed out, twisting the ring on his finger and looking distinctly put out, "the traditional construction material, as I understand it."

"Well… no." He shrugged. "But you know what my brother is."

I frowned. "I doubt the trees think much of your cabin." I couldn't hear them. Metal or something else, we were cut off. That didn't mean I liked seeing them cut down; they could have been useful if I could get through to them.

"It happens." He sighed regretfully. "Even in the new business."

"It must have been difficult." I looked at the empty, naked glade he'd created, the crushed remains of gold. "Watching everything you touch turn to ash."

He shrugged. "You two'd know." A grin, quick and friendly. "Anyway, you have to admit there's more to it." He stretched out one hand, palm down. All around us, there was a creaking and groaning. Silver blackened and bronze turned green; gold pitted, melted, warped. It speeded and they simply crumbled to dust, leaving us standing in gray nothing.

He closed his hand, flipped it over, and opened it again, like a magician entertaining children with a coin. In his hand, a miniature bronze, silver, and gold forest shone, so small and yet so perfect…

"No one else'll touch it now." He eyed Karasu. "That's your cup of tea, eh?" He flipped it into the air, catching it casually. "Of course, this dinky thing isn't much use or entertainment." He pocketed it. "Ah well - to each his own. It would have crumbled eventually." He turned to go.

I stepped after him, knowing Karasu couldn't stop me (there are rules) and relishing the moment. Catching his arm, I said, "He destroys everything he touches. I don't want him. Take him with you."

He turned back slowly, face sympathetic, and for a moment…

"Not everything," he said slowly. "He's not mine. He'll stay another night."

I clenched my fists, and a hand the size of my head lands gently on my shoulder. "Hey - you know, we all come from your heads. My brother was on about that a while back. How we're your dolls, how you make us up." His eyes met mine, burning in. "And we number seven."

"Three more chances," I noted ruefully. If it made him feel better…

He hesitated. I'd missed something. But he patted my shoulder, ruffled my hair, and said, "Sure, kiddo."

Then he was gone.

Karasu said thoughtfully, "Happy now? Finally, you fit in too." I didn't see him move, but his arms were around me, face buried in the my hair, my hands pressing uselessly on his shoulders. I reached cursorily for a plant, but as expected, they didn't answer. We were standing in a veritable jungle of them, finally things to hear, but they didn't - listen. They waited and watched and wouldn't do as I said. That was all right, I told myself. They weren't the plan.

That didn't make it easier.

He whispered, "Stop trying. Why should they listen to you? I live here." His lips touched the side of my face, almost a kiss. I couldn't _move_. "You just visit."

_Breathe. Wait_. "I still own the place," I pointed out. "And you never pick up the wet towels."

"Why do you do that?" He drew back slightly, curiosity dancing across his features. "Pretend you're not frightened."

I threw a punch (same cycle, same movements, give him something to expect) and he caught it without looking away from my eyes.

"Does it make you feel better somehow?"

"Whistle a happy tune," I offered.

He smiled, not the one I knew and not the false grin he'd painted on for King Morpheus - a demented sort of smirk. "You aren't afraid of things you can't see - is that right? Let me do you a favor. I can afford to be generous." He put a hand over my eyes, and when he drew it back there was nothing but blackness. "Now you never have to be afraid again."

"Hey, Kurama! You okay?" Kuwabara was shaking me. I knew my eyes are open, and for one dizzying moment I couldn't see and realize with sick amusement that I was going to vomit on the poor boy for sheer frustrated terror because I wasn't ready for _this_ -

Then I blinked, and there were lights and reflections and colors.  
It was just a dream.

Yusuke and Kuwabara were looking at me strangely. "You were freaking out, tossing and muttering, and we couldn't get you to wake up," Kuwabara said, beautifully honest and simple, transparent concern writ large on his square face.

"Yeah." Yusuke looked more suspicious, and as if he'd be happy to hit something and make this go away. "You sleep like the dead."

* * *

Reviews. I _begs_ for them.

So, yeah, our first of the Flashbacks because of how the ring is bleeding them together and everything, because Dream is a bastard that way. Backhanded help. Also Kurama is a bastard. And Karasu is a bully and a bastard both. Yay for fun characters!

Shades of Botan/Kurama being because of Windswift's "Acquaintance." She doesn't even like the pairing, but most things of hers are all but canon for me when it comes to YYH, so I have to write them flirting Just Because.


	6. Delirium

AN: Something occurs to me. Well, aside from "oh my god, yeah, I could update now it's only been like months or something". I have me a whacky story here, built muchly on time running in circles, and here I'm yammering about changing the end. I just want to assure you that (and I realize the muck-pit I'm putting my foot in by saying this on the net, especially in relation to plot, but yes, I am about to quote Lestat on the subject of storytelling) "I'm going to take care of you." All the foreshadowing still counts, and as of last chapter the new ending, though still vague, has foreshadowing all its own. Nothing is random. I have you covered.

AN2: Except in that this thing will not allow me to make line breaks, all of a sudden! So bear with whatever I'm about to stick in until it does let me. Also, I told a lie, because the breaks? They're going to be random.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Chapter Five

_You sleep like the dead. _

I didn't, though. Not under normal circumstances. This could be problematic too.

"Shuuchi!" Shiori walked into my room carrying a pile of laundry and stopped, startled. "Oh, you scared me. Why are you back so early in the morning, sweetheart? Didn't you want to stay with your friends?"

I stood, relieving her of the bundle. "As much of a sacrifice as it was, I had to get back. Homework, you know."

She smiled, pulling me impulsively into a hug. "I love you, Shuuchi."

"I know. I love you too, Mother." I held her tight for a moment, then drew back. "But what did you want done around the house that brought this on?"

She laughed. "Foolish." Her eyes searched mine, cheer straining. "You don't have another tournament, though?"

"The chess, you mean," I said calmly before my stomach could drop through the floor. It had done plenty enough of that lately. "No, I don't - why would you think so?"

"It was so abrupt last time, is all," she said dismissively. "Never mind, Shuuchi." A kiss to my forehead and she was gone.

_Shuuchi_ would have walked straight past Yusuke. Shuuchi's chess tournaments would have taken place in the human world, in hotels with working phones. Pity that there was only so much pretending I could do.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"You had better have a damn good excuse for my just finding out something about you from that ferry girl, after the detective and the human scum both already knew."

Kurama stood from his desk, turning to face Hiei where he perched in the window. "You know, they're just going by 'Botan,' 'Yusuke,' and 'Kuwabara' lately." He smiled, shrugging. "You weren't, in the most technical of senses, there to be told."

Hiei snorted. "You tend to find ways when you try hard enough."

"Generally speaking. I suppose I wasn't particularly anticipating this discussion." He sank down on the end of his bed.

"There is no discussion," Hiei spat scornfully. "It's just another demon. You'll deal with it."

"…Yes." Kurama folded his hands. "Thank you, Hiei."

"If you ever let me find something out after those bottom-feeders again, I'll burn your brain out through your nose."

"I shall take that into account." Kurama sighed. "It's nice to know someone isn't going to need a half an hour of reassurances that I can take care of myself."

"Hn."

"Since you're not concerned…"

"I'm not leaving."

"I see."

Hiei snarled a little under his breath. The problem with knowing someone well enough to read them was assuming you could properly interpret the text. And Kurama's readings were getting careless.

"You took a sword in the gut for Yusuke."

Kurama met his gaze again with a puzzled smile. "Actually, I took a sword in the gut for a spirit detective who had recently saved my life and who, I assumed at the time, had the ear of the god about to sentence me, thereby greatly influencing both my own and my human mother's lives."

"You jumped in front of a sharp object to save the life of a human," Hiei insisted icily. "Nothing you could ever do, nothing that could ever be done to you, will ever lower you further in my eyes."

Kurama lowered his head, eyes disappearing behind his hair. Hiei could see him stifling a laugh. "Thank you again."

"Just don't go developing some sort of Stockholm's."

"It would probably help if I did. For one thing, a crush has never stopped me. And for another… well, there's a bit of a pattern where my exes are concerned, had you noticed?"

"That they're all dead or missing vital parts of their anatomy?"

Kurama raised an eyebrow in a facial shrug. "It tends to keep happening." He blinked very slowly, as if he were wearing weights on his eyelids.

Hiei felt a bit triumphant for having noticed it when, from what he gathered, Yusuke hadn't. He was definitely going to rub his observational skills in the detective's face.

Then he considered the three-eyes jokes and decided to find another realm in which he was superior. Speed, for example.

He caught Kurama's shoulders before his head hit the mattress when his eyes blanked and he fell back.

" 'Cause everybody knows

If you don't mind your mother's words

A wicked wind will blow

Your ribbons from your curls…" Switching veins, Karasu held up a silver chain with a pendant dangling from the end, trailing red. "You know, Kurama, crows are supposed to collect pretty things, not foxes. And I don't like all this talking to people about me. Your private life is none of their concern."

"Don't touch that," I hissed, swiping at it. It dropped to the floor and the ruby center snapped open, a few discordant notes spilling out. "It didn't play that song before…"

"Now, what did that accomplish?" He contemplated me, expression unreadable. "I have been very patient with you so far, seeing as you plainly have a few revelations to make as to the nature of our relationship, but that patience, Kurama, is wearing thin. Dissuasive tactics such as yanking you back here will not be the extent of my vengeance if you continue dragging others into this."

"We don't have a relationship," I answered, sidestepping his threats. "We have… this." I gestured and, in following my hand, noticed that we weren't in the attic any longer. Twenty-foot-high stone walls crumbled all around us in a twisting passageway. Clouds hung limply over the top, filling the labyrinth with mist, tendrils of which curled around the dead vines.

I stooped to pick up the nearest bit of litter - there was so much of it, bleached-white bits all over the ground. My fingers closed around the head of a doll, long black hair streaming down over what should be a back and was nothing instead. "These aren't mine."

Karasu smiled, the real one, which was less unnerving than his maniacal grin, though only in that it signaled a different kind of danger. "Yes." He kicked out, and the finger-bones of a hand small enough to fit in my palm clicked against the stone and earth. "They are."

I opened my mouth to contradict him. He walked away, and I followed him around the nearest bend, avoiding the gray remains of vines clinging desperately to bits of broken children, dolls and bones alike.

I looked up again just in time to avoid running into his back when he stopped, and automatically sidesteped him to see beyond.

The stained-glass door. (It struck me, suddenly, as terrible appropriate as a description - "stained".) I reached up as blood trickled past our shoes, my hand closing convulsively on his shoulder. "Not yet."

He looked at me speculatively, reaching out and running a nail down the glass. It screeched like a blackboard under his finger, bleeding at the cuticle.

I put my other hand on his arm. Desperation tactics, and he knew it, was smiling with the knowledge. I said it anyway - "Take me with you" - and looked back.

Another crumbling stone room, this one with a solitary window through which the space gasped for light. The beach outside was gray and foggy, a trail of footprints leading off into the pine woods beyond.

The bed was the only immediately apparent furnishing the room had - a huge, velvet-covered, ebony thing. I could smell it molding, see where the mattress was slowly caving at one side. The fungus was slowly eating the red away there, turning it black as the frame.

A woman was sitting in the center. Her wavy blond hair hung limp and greasy around a haggard face, once-fine clothing clinging to and concealing her frame like a shroud. She cradled the little boy in her lap, staring vacantly at the wall and rocking back and forth.

Movement made me turn, and I realized that there was one other thing here. It was a large mirror, perhaps five feet by the same, leaning against the wall, facing the bed. The image in it was mottled and hazy, a gray face, a body, an open door, so much blood.

Behind us, a different door shuddered under the force of a blow.

The boy brushed his doll's hair.

"Don't worry, Karasu." She had a beautiful voice, deep and melodic and soothing. She was the one he inherited his own from, I'd imagine. It looked more than anything else as if she were a ventriloquist's dummy, her vacant face and wooden form harboring a voice that still wanted to live. "Your sister will be back with help soon."

"Father's gone mad, hasn't he."

"Father's always been mad, darling." She smiled at her own something-of-a-joke.

"But he doesn't usually -" the door creaked and caved slightly into the silence "- do this."

"No. Not in front of you two. I think he means to kill us."

"Should we go after big sister?"  
"You can't go fast enough. You're too small. And I can't ever leave this house, you know that." Never once did she look at him, never did she sound anything but calm.

The door splintered.

She sighed, pushing him off her lap. "Get under the bed. No matter what happens, you be quiet. No matter what - don't say a word. Tell me that."

"No matter what." He climbed down, holding to the edge until his questing feet found the floor, and then, cradling the doll, he lifted the edge of the blanket and disappeared beneath the bed.

My head hit the wall of the labyrinth with a crack that made stars go off in my head, Karasu's nails sinking into my shoulders. I could feel them going through muscle, tearing, and bit through my tongue with not-screaming - luckily, since I would not have been able to forestall it otherwise when the heated air at my torso exploded.

Funny… I'd managed to forget, already, what my own flesh smelled like when it was cooking.

It would have been nice to pass out, but that is not conducive to continued vitality in my world, so I've a habit of not doing it too terribly often. Still. Just now…

I landed on my back, hand cracking off something hard and off-white. My vision doubled and smeared, Karasu reduced to a faceless black pillar with an outstretched hand just before my left knee shattered in wave of heat and I gave up, trying to scream. I choked on the blood in my mouth instead.

If I could think… or move…

His knees slammed to the ground on either side of my hips, one hand cradling the back of my head gently as the butterflies filled my vision with color, streaming past him to gather into a cloud of purple-pink-red-yellow-blue over his shoulder. Some of them were fish.

For a moment, my vision was crystal-clear, and I could see him bending closer, one finger moving over my bloody lips.

By then, the butterflies-some-of-which-were-fish had solidified into a girl, perhaps seven to nine, with red hair floating around her shoulders as if underwater. Her back was to us, arms out as though on a tightrope.

I choked again, forcing out, "Don't you think you're overreacting?" as Karasu's weight pressed against the gaping hole in my middle, and she turned around, face lighting up beneath its clown-smeared makeup. "Hey!" She tapped Karasu's shoulder. "Stop that."

His head whipped around, hair stinging my face. "Why?" He sounded polite, reasonable, and not remotely insane, which was slightly offset by our position and the last few butterflies turning into a hand on the end of the girl's arm.

"Because he doesn't like it. It'd be fine if he did but he doesn't - I can tell. When people that I don't want to touch me do I make them stop but I don't think he can here, so you'll have to on your own because I made you. Where are we?" Her voice wove in and out, dipping up and down and her tone making no sense.

"No place for children," he responded, one hand still behind my head, the other opening. I saw nothing in it, which meant nothing, or something that didn't help.  
"R -" I started, and coughed again, agony ripping its way through me on the wings of all the screams that never made it out. It wasn't as if it could possibly get worse, I told myself, and while he was distracted I forced my arms out straight, knocking him off me and to the side before letting my head drop back and trying to find air and the lungs to keep it in.

"Well…" she tapped her lip, looking skyward. "How about this - if you don't stop I'll turn you into an obsessive demon-thing who needs to control everything to feel safe and who can't be with anyone for very long ever since his family died so he just kills everything so he won't feel guilty, and even that doesn't work because he feels very bee-ay-dee afterwards so he just gets to like being like that, and I'll make it so that you've never been anything else."

Karasu stood, brushing himself off and regarding her with a smile. "I apologize, my lady. I had no idea you were quite so… interesting. However, you have things slightly wrong - I am his."

I gasped in enough air to expel enough blood to say, "No. You're. Not."

"Bee-ay-dee," she confided, "spells _bad_."

To me, Karasu shook his head. "You killed me, Kurama. That creates a bond, whether you like it or not - one unparalleled by any other. And I killed you. We're not so far apart."

She stared at the ring on his finger, hesitating, and then asked, "You're his?" She looked up at him, head tilting back to find his face, one blue eye and one green glinting beneath her stubble-covered head.

"_No_."

"Yes."

She was plucking at her lower lip now, with fingernails bitten down to ragged, almost-bleeding stubs. "And you'll never ever leave him no matter what with a cherry on top?" Her free hand reached out, palm up.

"You have my word." He placed a ridiculously red, round cherry in the proffered hand.

"Are you going to keep your promise? Everyone used to, you know, and then someone broke the first one and the pieces got everywhere, all big and sharp and important. Then they got broken more and more until the pieces were all bits of sand in everyone's sandwiches, spoiling the picnic and getting under everyone's skin, in other promises and they all break so easy. Like _that_. They make people come to me, they get so worn away with the sandpaper. They don't even want to but they get used to me - I'm nice, really I am." She sighed, sharp shoulders slumping under the white coat draped over her miniscule form. "But they always leave. I guess my big sister's just prettier. I used to be very beautiful." Her eyes darted around, counting things I couldn't see. "What's the name of the word for when you can sleep in front of someone?"

"Safety?" I tried.

Karasu smiled at me beatifically. "Trust."

"Yes…" she sighed. She leant down, cupping her hands around my ear and whispering without any breath, "My brother left." Letting me go and smoothing her skirt meticulously, she announced aloud, "My brother is that. Was that. I don't know."

I shook my head. "But _he_ isn't. Just because he won't leave - that doesn't make him trustworthy."

She rolled her eyes. "No one ever said _worthy_." Tapping her lip in thought, she continued, "Well… you know. You did. But. I don't know. Let's leave now."

"I can't walk," I pointed out.

"Why not?" Her eyes were huge. "That must be awful. How do you go places when you're bored?"

"I can't walk at present," I corrected myself. "Because _he_ blew my legs off in a fit of pique."

"So?"

We were walking, the girl in the lead, following a string of butterflies trailing from her hands, which flickered in and out of being insects themselves. "Does it make sense to you," I asked, "his belonging to me now?"

"No," she said reflectively, "he's my sister's by that Standard of Measurement." And again, "So?" She started skipping before I could think of an answer that might stand a chance in the errant winds of her logic, forcing me to hurry to keep her in sight. "One, two, take off our shoes," she chanted, "three, four, don't ask for more. Five, six, clock won't tick. Seven, eight, hide your hate. Nine, ten…" she looked over her shoulder at them. "What's next?"

"Around again," Karasu provided.

"Aren't those awfully close to the real words?" I inquired with hint of sarcasm. Karasu smiled, much too satisfied, and couldn't resist making the same gamble I'd made: "You're still trying to use those plants of yours, Kurama," he said. "They don't work here."

I looked away, as if discomfited. He was right, after all.

"We're out!" She cried, spinning through the next opening.

Following her through, I looked around. "We're not," I said slowly. "We're in the center." The middle of the maze was a large circle of crumbling gray stone, with none of the detritus of the rest of the space; there were only vines, especially thick on the enormous throne at the far left.

"We're out of the _maze_," she insisted. "Come and meet my friend!" As she danced over, the vines wiggled away like caterpillars, leaving the chair's inhabitant bare. It was a skeleton, every bit large enough for its seat. All the bones remained in place, though nothing held them - all but the head. I glanced around and didn't see it.

"It's sad, isn't it?" She said. "The little lights man took it away when it was the reason he lived here and then still made him live here anyway. Well not live."

I looked out at the passage, past Karasu, who was leaning against the entrance. There was a complete human ribcage nearby. "He did kill a lot of people," I noted.

"No one told him not to. Not in a language he could understand." She patted the hand on the throne's armrest comfortingly.

"He didn't waste too much time trying to learn the local tongue, did he."

Karasu answered me this time: "They had different priorities."

"Yes, those!" The girl straightened abruptly. "I have to go do mine now. A little boy in Nanking just found the leaves-turned-gold in his backyard and I want some too even if they turn back when their wings get dry and rattle."

Karasu nodded. "I hope you find some pink ones."

"Oh, that's sweet." She grinned. "I like you. I wish I'd killed you. But I don't think that would be the same. Would you make the same promises to me as you do to him?"

"My lady," he said gravely, "I would make even better ones. Still, they would, I admit, never be the same."

I shook my head. "Please. He's a lunatic. I don't want him. Take him with you."

She shrugged. "He gets me, but he gets you too. He's not mine. He'll stay another night." She split the air down the middle and stepped through, leaving the breach to shimmer out of existence behind her.

I sighed. "Tell me you know the way out."

Karasu held out a hand, and I took it without thinking (and his was wet and warm and red, the liquid seeping under my fingernails), and then we were back in the attic and Hiei was shaking my shoulders.

I sat up on my bed. "Finally," Hiei groused. "You were out like a human for five minutes straight."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

AN: Yay for Delirium! And yay for Hiei, because "hn" is really all the vocab you need, damnit.

Allow me to be immensely hypocritical and beg for reviews even though it takes me forever to respond to them. Or update. Or anything. But still - reviews! Help support me as I wend my way through college? Think of it as a good deed, O Gentle Reader.


	7. Desire

AN: Sheiße will to be hitting the fan now.

Dedication and disclaimer in first chapter.

* * *

Chapter Six

_Buffy: I've lost battles before. But no one else has ever made me a victim. _

_Faith: And you can't stand that, can you? You're all about control. _

_

* * *

  
_

Yusuke had found, in his scholastic career, that the time that school claimed to open didn't have to be set in stone as a personal arrival goal for him. Since he had a hunch Kurama felt differently (when he was around to show up for school at all), he had decided to waste his morning meandering around in the general direction of Kurama's school instead of asking if Kurama could do the same for him.

"So, man," he said after he'd found the demon and then stretched out the small talk until he could see the roof of Kurama's school a street away, "how you holding up?"

He was expecting it. Damn, and Yusuke'd been so careful about creeping up on the subject. "Give me two more days," he said calmly. "They're just dreams, after all, and contrary to popular theory, dreams do not -"

They were walking under a power line, with a crow on it. It cawed halfway through Kurama's sentence, and Yusuke made a mental note not to ever interrupt the guy again when the bloody smear of black feathers and beak hit the ground.

"That," Yusuke wagered, "was _not_ good."

"No," Kurama allowed.

Yusuke waited, and then pressed, "I think it was just a normal bird."

"It was."  
"I think I need to do something."

Kurama was still staring at the bird as he tucked his now-normal rose back into his hair. "They don't sound harsh, do they. Everyone says they do, but it's more like someone singing underwater." He looked at Yusuke. "Two more days. If I haven't taken care of it by then -" he stopped suddenly, eyes widening, and then continued, "we'll talk."

"The hell with talk! I don't like any of this, and if you haven't gotten rid of him in two days, I'm going in guns blazing." Illustrating his point, he formed a gun with his hand. "Bang."

Kurama quickly pushed his hand down, face smooth. "Why don't you go and tell Botan your concerns? She's good at listening to these kinds of things, when she isn't making cracks about undead boyfriends listening in."

"Gotcha," Yusuke said with admirable subtlety, as such things went, until he winked. He couldn't resist. "I'll do that."

* * *

I sat at my desk slowly, rationalizing that tonight had no reason to be worse than any other so far.

Of course, it didn't have any reason not to be, either. No reason. There was no reason to -

"I'll take no gold, miss  
I'll take no silver  
I'll take those sweet lips  
That thou will deliver…"

The little boy whispered the song into the ear of the doll in his arms. The bed creaked over them, and the splintered remains of the door lay in the middle of the attic floor with no wall. Some china dolls were scattered among my possessions. A large, round mirror leaned against the wall, providing a clear view of the top of the bed to anyone below. A door that wasn't there to be reflected warped around the edges inside it, blackness-biting seeping through.

"Maybe I can have little sister or brother to play with," the boy confided hopefully in his doll's ear, inaudible above the sound of an explosion atop the bed.

His sister ran in through where the door would be if it were there, appearing from nowhere. She stood there for a moment, alone, and then closed her eyes and threw her hands out. There was another blast of heat and light.

A rumble - his father yelling - and the third blast shook the room, knocking the girl from her feet, clutching the bloody remains of her chest and neck. Her face was probably twisted with pain, but it would still be beautiful, if he could have seen it.

"Karasu," she whispered thickly, when he crawled out - after the debris had settled. "Come here."

He looked at the bed, and then did. "Are they dead?"  
She nodded, breath sticky and slow behind her empty-face, words burbling over her lips. "I need you to do something for me. You know - you know how, when Father does - what he does to Mother, sometimes he says that she's his because of that?"

He nodded back, even though he didn't. Her words were dribbling into the blood, and she'd run out of both soon.

"Well, that's why Mommy killed herself. Now she's not his. But if I die from him, I will be his, forever. So I need you to do something for me. I can't… I'm too tired…" Her hand found his. "If you kill me instead, I'll stay with you forever, instead of him. Won't that be nice?"

He could barely hear her anymore, but he nodded again, and put his hand on her chest. "Promise me something," she gasped. "Don't remember me like this. Remember me when I was pretty."

"I promise," he said, and then he was all alone. He looked over at Mother, who was finally looking back at him. Her eyes were shiny and unblinking, unseeing. All along, Mother had only had dolls' eyes.

I was in Karasu's arms, surrounded by the rubble of the scene - everything but the bodies. I didn't move for too long, and he pulled me closer, burying his face in my hair and setting off a bomb at my back. It didn't hit me, but the heat did, singing my clothes.

"_Finally_."

The slender… person… had Lord Shifter's coloring, with golden eyes that glimmered as s/he slinked forward.

"Could I," Karasu growled, yanking away and leaving me to retreat, "have a few minutes alone with him for once?"

The person shrugged, hands spreading innocently. "That wouldn't be much fun just yet, would it? They're no good when they kick." Golden eyes gleamed, catching Karasu's. "And it would be a crime to let this one get away. I mean, look at him. Have you ever seen anything so perfectly beautiful? Have you ever _desired _anything so very much?"

Karasu looked at me, still seeing golden eyes.

I met his firmly. "But I don't want him." I'd forgotten this part. Using plants. _There is no reason. _

The person sighed, walking closer to me. "Haven't you ever heard of the golden rule? Whoever has the gold makes the rules." S/he leant in, lips brushing my ear even when I stepped away, breath smelling of roses and making me dizzy, eyelashes brushing the side of my face. "I could _make _you want him."

I stopped thinking. Concepts - Want. Take. Have. Feelings - lips, hands, skin.

"I know your tastes run to destruction," the person continued, background noise I didn't understand as s/he circled us, far outside the sphere of what mattered. "But - and I do admit to being biased - isn't this way _better_? Slow poison over a messy bullet. Anyone with a true appreciation of beauty must infinitely prefer my methods."

The necklace I was wearing slipped through my open shirt, and I could think again as it touched my skin. I blew the stem of a rose through Karasu's hand. It didn't make us any farther apart, but it gave him pause, me room to breathe again.

"Oh my." The person sounded genuinely, if mildly, peeved. "Are you going to let him get away with that? Let him control you?" S/he was standing behind me, a hand coming past to stroke Karasu's face. His eyes were glazed, staring at nothing. "Let him laugh at you while he and his little friends burn you in effigy…"

I bit my tongue and did the only thing I could think of, which was to take advantage of my position to get him away from the person, quickly. Knocking Karasu on his back seemed like the thing to do, and I went down with him.

His eyes were still empty (as he grabbed my arms and reversed our position, hands tearing at my clothes, no plants answering any longer), as unseeing as -

I tore the necklace off and put it around his neck, fighting to keep thinking without it. He stopped, breath harsh, and didn't move. "Don't," I said. "You won't be free. You'll just belong to it, and then its twin will have you soon after."

"Oh, Kurama." He smiled. "I've always been theirs."

I smiled back. _I can do this. _"So stop." I stroked his face, just where the person had. "Stay with me." _I can do this. _"Be mine."

He stared at me, and then sat back. Cautiously, I leant up on my elbows, and he smiled again. "All right."

The person was silent for one long moment. Then s/he started laughing. "Oh…" s/he gasped, "you two are priceless. Humanity, demonkind, you're all so priceless! You'll do anything to delay even for a moment the ending you know is inevitable." It choked back more gales of merriment, wiping its eyes as if it could cry for anything. "Well, then - to answer the question you can no longer ask, No. He could've had you seven ways from Thursday by now, and he hasn't. He isn't mine." A beautiful smile. "Yet." S/he waved. "I'll see you soon. Even if you don't see me."

We were alone, and a key gleamed in the dust where s/he had been standing, dull and tarnished silver with a foul spot. His arms were longer, and he was in a better position, and he got it first.

Karasu rolled off to sit beside me, and we both collapsed, and breathed.

I opened my eyes and watched a bleary smudge of orange and white splinter and coalesce into Kuwabara's lantern-jawed face peering around the door.

"Hey, Kurama," he said cautiously. "You gonna be sick?"

I sat up. "Why is it so bright?"

"The sun does that." He looked very pleased with his almost-witty repartee. "It's past noon. You said you'd help me with math homework on Saturday," he reminded me. "Which it is now."

"Noon? Really?" I stood up, keeping my eyes on him. He looked too big for the door frame, and his clothes clashed with each other and with his hair.

He nodded. "Your mom let me in. She had to go grocery shopping, but she said she'd be back soon." He looked around my room with interest, still hovering in the doorway. I paused for a moment, trying to convince my senses that there was nothing wrong in the room, and realized that there was, and it was me. I _smelled_ of him, sweat and singed things and brimstone. "Seriously, man, if you need to go hurl or whatever, don't let me stop you."

I laughed and sat back down on the bed. "I don't think that would help."

"Whatever you say," he agreed dubiously. "I'm gonna go whip something up for lunch. Breakfast. Come down when you're functioning, okay?"

I leaned back, bracing myself on my palms. "Helping yourself to our kitchen, are you?"

He looked momentarily embarrassed, then recovered. "And once you've had instant ramen Kuwabara-style, you'll be sorry you gave me a hard time about it!"

I stood again, feeling more up to the idea of walking. "I have no doubt. I'll come with you; wouldn't want to miss a chance to steal the Kuwabara recipe."

"Yeah, well, you might wanna brush your hair first," he suggested.

"Ugh," I complained, running my fingers through the mess on my head and grabbing a brush off the bedside table. "Tell me when I look human again."

"Done," he said promptly.

I paused. "Not quite what I meant."

"Yeah, well, you know." He shuffled in place.

I dragged the brush through my hair, wincing. Tossing and turning had not done me any favors. "You're a very good person, Kuwabara."

"That sounds like there's going to be a 'but' at the end," he noted mournfully. "If it's about math or training, I know already."

"No. No addendums. I was just thinking I haven't met many people like you." I walked over to my bureau and opened one of the top drawers with my free hand, fishing around and letting my mind go blank.

"...Thanks?"

"Yes, you're welcome." My hand closed on something small and cold.

"Cool." He beamed. "Your hair's pretty much better now." As I tossed the brush onto the bed, he added, "I don't know anyone like you, either," with the most perfect sincerity - in his fourteen whole, entire years on this earth and he'd never met anyone who could match up to me.

I pressed the key into his hand on my way past him and said, "Good."

* * *

AN: Everyone is so nasty, oh my god. Except Kuwabara. I am deeply in love with Kuwabara.

Also, I would like to point out to anyone unaware that the god-awful pseudo-pun off of its name - that is something Desire does, not something I made up.

Anyway, I'm about to go into finals, so I shall see you all on the other side. Reviews would increase the chances of my surviving this by over nine thousand!


	8. Despair

AN: Okay, home stretch! Penultimate chapter. Dedication and disclaimer in prologue.

* * *

Chapter Seven

"_The Woodsman, he cuts open the wolf's stomach, the girl comes out without a scratch... There ain't no fucking woodsman in this world." _

_- Lucas, _The Woodsman

"He actually asked to be rescued in so many words?" Koenma hedged.

Yusuke smacked the toddler's desk. "Yes! No. But he made it perfectly clear what he wasn't saying! Anyway, it's not rescuing. It's lending a helping hand to a friend who's having relationship issues."

Koenma sucked on his pacifier, reflecting, and shook his head. "You've lost me."

The ogre guy, who was going through papers at the other end of the desk and looking very intelligent for someone who was blue and wearing a loincloth made out of some kind of deceased cat, said, "It's finding the least costly way to salvage the usefulness of a valuable employee, sir."

"Oh." Koenma nodded. "That makes sense."

From the midst of the gang gathered behind Yusuke, Kuwabara asked, "So we've gotta get inside Kurama's head?"

"Without his knowing it, so that Karasu won't have time to stop us," Botan confirmed gravely. "It's going to be very dangerous, even if we do find a way to make it all work in the first place."

"Yeah," Kuwabara said, "but… inside Kurama's _head_? I bet there are alphabetized boxes of torture techniques under a big sign that says 'training'." He shuddered.

Hiei snorted his extreme contempt.

Kuwabara jumped theatrically and looked around. "Hey, did someone hear something from the floor?"

"You'll have even more trouble processing sound when I rip your ears from your head," Hiei snarled.

"Yukina would heal me," Kuwabara said confidently. "Anyway, we're in the boss's office, and you can't do that kind of thing in here. It's disrespectful."

"Oh-KAY, boys, shut it," Yusuke snapped. "Mommy and Daddy are talking. So kid," as he turned back to Koenma, "what've you got? And keep in mind, if you repeat what you told Botan, I'm gonna ask you politely, the first time, not to lie to me."

"Well," Koenma said carefully, "there might be a way, if it had a snowball's chance in hell of working. Which, unfortunately, it doesn't. It includes putting a volatile monster in the hands of a volatile teenager and trusting them both to destroy a volatile demon while trespassing in Lord Morpheus's realm."

"Uh-huh." Yusuke shrugged. "Lemme ask you - you more worried about this Morphine guy, who is not here, or me and my army?"

Botan stepped up, patting Yusuke's shoulder, "Please, Yusuke, don't threaten your employer."

"Employer like hell, I don't get paid," Yusuke muttered, but he let her take the floor with her friendliest grin.

"Koenma, sir, do you think your father might be a little upset if you lost a mascot like the Legendary Youko Kurama?"

Koenma gulped, and looked shifty. "It's just… Lord Morpheus is… and no one wants a lifetime of nightmares…"  
"_You think_?" Yusuke spat.

Koenma visibly strained, and looked at things from a point other than his own. "Ah. I see what you mean. Yes, you make an excellent point. How could we call ourselves men -" he looked around and amended, "how could we call ourselves gods, ferry girls, demons, properly respectful young men, and self-indulgent spirit detectives if we failed to rise to the occasion?" St. Crispin's Day Speech done, he settled back in his chair. "Botan, take care of it. Ogre, help her."

* * *

"Go to sleep now  
Little ugly  
Go to sleep now  
You little fool…"

I was lying under the bed, looking into the mirror that leaning against the wall. I was alone, and it took several moments to sink in. In the mirror, a pale, naked, obese woman with an underslung jaw dragged a hook down her face.

I scrambled out and stood, looking around again. "Karasu?"

The woods had no underbrush left; there was nothing but birch trees and snow. The wind picked up eddies of crystals, whipping them around in the knife's-edge moonlight. I walked down the path, as it seemed the thing to do, and still there was no sign of him.

A flash of red caught my eye, and I stopped. A rosebush in full bloom was only feet from the path. I walked to it, and no sooner had the first stem broken off in my hand than arms snaked around my waist from behind. "There you are," I said. I didn't waste time trying to make the rose be anything it wasn't already; as it stood, it had thorns.

I turned in his embrace and slashed the stem across his face. It had no effect; maybe I hadn't even hit him. He grabbed my hair. "It's past time I started this," he hissed, and I stepped away.

"You have all the time in the world, and I have places to be." Leaving the red hood in his hands, I continued down the path, flexing my fingers absently. I felt stronger this way. And the snow - I could use it as cover. It wasn't the same shade as my hair, skin, clothes, but in this light, it didn't matter; the color was close enough.

There was a house at the end of the path, and I went inside, back into the attic. All of the plants were winter gray-brown and dry, and I could see my breath. I could also see every single thing that had been in a box or chest, because there were no boxes or chests any longer.

"You'd no right," I said tightly.

"You _offered_," he said, and then with a too-sincere smile, "Doesn't your trust count as tacit permission?"

I paused, then dismissed the feeling as déjà vu. "I said what I had to. How do you think this is going to work?"

He shrugged, the movement to small and the turn of his lips too... childish? "You're in charge, right?"

This wasn't déjà vu. "Excuse me?"

"Well?" He crossed his arms, all elbows and I knew that stance, the way he was standing as he shifted his feet. "You're supposed to be the one with the plans."

My lips felt cold and numb. (Yomi, and I'd told him that it wouldn't even if he had it. Kuwabara, and I'd said I was. Hiei, and I'd asked if this was a ruse to stick me with the paperwork.)

He smiled, his own smile, and asked, "Now who knows his victim?"  
"Not quite all. Not yet."

"No," he agreed. "Not yet." He threw a bomb my way, and I dodged - right into his arms even though he couldn't possibly be over here already - and he wound my hair around his fingers, dragging back until my neck felt close to breaking. I couldn't move, couldn't even support myself; he was doing that.

"I think," he announced silkily, "I've been very patient. But it's too late now; you _said_ -"

Behind me, the mirror shattered. He let me go, and I staggered as my legs caught my weight again. We both stared down at the millions of fractured images of the huge, gray-pale woman, dozens of her, whole and in bits. She'd punctured her eye now. Fluid ran down her cheek. The hook on her finger swiped out, far from where it could possibly be, nicking bits of both of our hair. She fingered the locks, weaving them in and out of each other in the reflections.

"So close," she said, voice like gravel being crushed. "So close, both of you." She nodded at me, regret tingeing her heavy features. "You long for my realm. It pulls at you. I'll see you yet, even if you don't see me. I'll always be there - just on the other side of your mirror." She sighed, the despondence of ages breaking out of the glass like a wave. "You've made this all so much more complicated than it has to be. If you'd let my twin have you, you'd be mine now," she points at me with a stubby finger, "and you soon after." She nodded to Karasu this time. Her eyes clouded. "You hadn't the sense to come in out the rain."

The bits of glass reflected only odd pieces of the room; that and the door. It wasn't even set in a wall this time, just hanging with nothing behind it (but still locked, still _locked_). Karasu looked at the key in his hand.

"You have forever," I pointed out, fingers closing convulsively on his arm.

"But you're so afraid of now, Kurama," he said, smiling, and fitted the key to the lock.

"_Don't_."

He paused, head tilting, and remarked, "There's no one left, is there?" I wasn't sure why breath came shorter, except a conviction that I'd forgotten something. "I'm going to tear you apart," he said, "piece by piece." He stretched out his hand, pulling loose from mine, and a watch went up in an explosion of gears. He grabbed my arm, now, and it didn't matter because I still couldn't move under my own power. "Try to remember meeting Yomi." He moved his hand, and again, a vase this time. "The last thing you said to Kuronue before that heist." A glass rose under a clear dome. "What Yusuke said on the way down the stairs to your mother's hospital bed." He turned the key in the lock, and smiled again. "How long do you think you'll last, Kurama? How long do you think you'll be you?"

I ran.

Trees flickered by at first, snow powdery and deceptively near-flat under our feet, and then there was just snow and the creaking, and I realized that the dip had been an edge - we were on ice. The creaking turned to cracking and I stopped, Karasu sliding to a halt behind me.

"It's going to break," I said, and his hand closed on mine.

"I know."

The water was so cold I managed to hold my breath only by sheer force of will, and I almost didn't mind that I couldn't swim with Karasu hanging onto me, because every place our bodies touched, I could almost retain feeling.

Then he kissed me, and I lost my breath -

and woke up in my bed, in my room, unable to move, a weight heavy across me. Karasu smiled -

and I woke up again, this time jerking so violently I fell from my bed.

A few seconds later, Shiori opened my door, eyes blearily concerned. "Shuuchi? Are you all right?"

I sat up, grinning ruefully. "Except for my pride." I rubbed my eyes. "Weren't you sleeping?"

She looked me over carefully in case of obvious fractures, and smiled absently. "What mother wouldn't hear her child fall?"

* * *

Review for great justice?


	9. No More

AN: And here we go. Dedication and disclaimer in the first chapter. Oh! And baku are real - well, you know, for a given value thereof - thing; they're Japanese demon-like things which eat dreams/nightmares.

* * *

_"I used to have demons in my room at night  
Desire, despair, desire  
So many monsters  
Oh, but now… _

_No more 'I love you's…"_

_- "No More 'I Love You's", Annie Lennox  
_

Chapter Eight

Koenma shook his head. "I can't believe I'm letting you do this. Remember, don't let the baku get at anything but Karasu, or there's no telling what it could do to any of you over there, or to Kurama if it eats some of the scenery."

Yusuke reached over and patted his overly-hatted head, just because it had to be embarrassing. "Hey, when have I ever let you down? Look, just gimme the leash and send us off to dreamland with the right tickets, okay?"

Koenma looked distinctly nonplussed. "You? You're not going, Yusuke." He glared at Botan. "What did you tell him?"

"Yeah, Botan, tell him what you told me," Yusuke demanded. "And lemme tell you, I'm just about two inches from fed the hell up with this - this -"

"Prevaricating," Kuwabara put in.

"Yeah, absolutely, that." Yusuke's brain caught up with what had just happened. "What?"

Botan cringed. "I didn't know you weren't planning on letting Yusuke go, sir."

"_Of course _I wasn't planning on letting Yusuke go!"

"The hell with this," Yusuke snarled, wishing there was something on hand to break so as to make himself more intimidating.

"He's right," Hiei said abruptly.

"Damn right I'm right. Tell him why, Hiei, you've probably got a reason he'll understand."

"I meant Koenma." Hiei looked very smug, which wasn't much of a change but was still making Yusuke even more annoyed with life. "I should go. Alone. Kurama and I won't need help with one demon, and Kurama won't want either of you there."

"What is this, Bizarro World? Since when is extra backup a bad thing? Kurama likes backup, remember? Fallback plans?"

Hiei snorted. "I'll enjoy seeing what he does to Karasu," he explained, or at least said in a tone which implied he thought it was an explanation.

"This is all fascinating, but what Kurama wants isn't the issue here," Koenma said. "The issue is who's most likely to get in unnoticed, and that leaves you and Hiei out, Yusuke. Karasu probably never gave much thought to Kuwabara, and his power is the least attention-grabbing." Botan was making wild throat-cutting motions at her boss, who continued obliviously, "And anyway, I'm not risking my Spirit Detective over this; Kuwabara is the most expendable -"

Yusuke leaned very far over the desk. "Excuse me?"

Koenma pushed his chair back. "- just at this moment, time-wise, you're very behind in school, Kuwabara's actually been making an effort..."

"Fuck you," Yusuke said, backing off in disgust. "Just... _fuck_ you."

"Kurama won't want him there," Hiei insisted, verging on irate. "It should be me."

"If you can go, I can, and I still say there's strength in numbers. It won't matter what Karasu knows if we just take him out fast enough."

"I can do it," Kuwabara said. "I think Kurama figured it was gonna be me." His face went oddly blank as he fished in his pocket, and then he came up with a little silver key, turning black in places and with a nasty spot on it. "He gave me this."

Yusuke stared. "That makes no sense, man. What's that got to do with anything?"  
"I dunno." Kuwabara looked at the key. "I forgot I had this."

"Oh, that's great. He gave you a scrap of metal to throw out and you forgot about it, so you think you can take on a demon that almost finished off Kurama?" Yusuke paused and looked at Hiei. "Unless you're about to tell me that's demon code for 'come on in my head, I've got beer and chicks'."

Hiei shrugged dismissively, which Yusuke figured meant he knew absolutely jack about this key deal and didn't want to say.

Koenma looked intrigued. "When did he give it to you?"

"Yesterday. I was at his house to study, and he..." Kuwabara looked confused. "He gave it to me. I think. I'm sure! I just don't remember when. Or how it got in these pockets. But that means it's a magic thing, right? So probably it'll help."

"Yeah, you forgetting something right in front of your face, definitely something uncanny afoot," Yusuke grumbled.

"He must have meant for you to let us know sooner than the last minute," Hiei snapped, "so that I could use it."

"You don't know what it is either, don't make out like you're so smart -"

"Boys!" Botan snapped. "Squabbling is getting us nowhere. Kuwabara's the safest bet, isn't he? And don't we want the safest bet?"

Hiei growled, "You're putting Kurama in even more -" and then stopped, looking at Kuwabara speculatively. "Fine," he finished, and smiled. "Send him."

"We really need to get on with this," Koenma said loudly, overriding Yusuke's attempt to ask what that had been all about. "It's almost time, and I give up. You boys decide."

* * *

I looked down at the gaping hole in my stomach and crumpled.

Karasu caught me before I hit the clean, smooth floor of the rink.

"Well," Koto said invisibly from the empty stands, "it looks like Karasu just completely ruined my chances for a threesome. Remember, kids - wear the cheese! Do not let it wear you."

Karasu hummed, stroking my hair as he cradled my head on his knees. He looked less intimidating upside-down. "I like this ending better," he mused.

"Don't lie to me," I said.

He sighed. "As you wish."

The crowd roared, my flesh smelled of burned meat and the pain made me wish for something to throw up as I fell facedown on the rubble that used to be rink. I'd failed everyone, I thought, as the agony started to move like lead through my limbs, growing more tolerable as I drifted away.

"This is better?" He asked.

I could see Kuwabara, because he was tallest. I hoped Hiei would remember to train him sometimes; he could use the discipline, and Hiei could use... "I never said that." I coughed, and blood spattered on the stone. "Just… get it over with."  
"Why," he asked, "would I do that?"

The stadium froze and cracked, and we fell back into the water.

It wasn't cold, and I wasn't in pain. I grabbed the nearest ledge of intact ice gingerly. Before I could test it, his hands closed on it beside mine, his chin touching my head as he drew close. "What are you doing?"

"Getting out. If you haven't noticed, it's freezing."

His shoulders moved against mine in a shrug. "Not once you get used to it."

I laughed. "It's still freezing then. Just… you are too." I didn't have much to lose, so I trusted my weight to the ice and pulled. It worked, and I slithered onto the attic floor.

Karasu was already there, standing; he took my hand, yanking me to my feet and after him out the door. I grabbed a rose from the nearest pile of junk while he wasn't looking.

Outside, the place was his again, but each stone and plank was made of ice. He dragged me along the corridor, which should have been slippery but of course wasn't. He was almost eager, looking ahead and moving too fast, and I used two of my fingers to tear petals from the flower in my hand, leaving them behind.

He looked over his shoulder, frowning. "Do you smell roses?" The question was absent, and I held the stem close behind my leg.

"Yes," I answered, keeping pace with him. "Always. The scent lingers."

I'd run out of petals, though, and as we continued, I began shredding the stem, leaving pathetic strings of it on the ice.

He frowned. "Do you smell plants?"  
"Yes," I repeated. "Always."

We were still going, and I had nothing but a thorn left. I fell back, letting him drag me, and pricked my fingers, trailing them along the walls.

"Do you smell blood?" The question was barely there; we'd nearly reached our destination.

"Yes."

We were in the center of the maze, for a moment, and then it was a room with three windows at the top of a tower, mountains sea forest, and the stones that made up the room glittered. Karasu stretched out a hand and three of the stones shattered, the wind howling through the cracks until ice grew over in its place, and I didn't even know what he'd taken. "How long?" He asked again.

Now the windows showed nothing but bleak, dark sky and snow. A crow pinwheeled past like a scrap of rag in the wind.

_One crow sorrow… _

"You'll arrive here every night now," he said, fingers ghosting over my arms, up and down. (Another crow joined the first.)

…_Two crows mirth… _

"The first dream of the rest of my nights." I smiled. (And another.)

…_Three crows a wedding… _

He smiled in return, fingers moving to my back, and still he only touched me with the tips. (Another.) "I know you still believe they'll come, but trust me - I've never had you more to myself."

…_Four crows a birth... _

I quirked an eyebrow. "Then this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship?" I asked sarcastically. He flattened a palm on my shoulder, pushing me back. (Another crow circled us.)

…_Five crows silver... _

(Another.) "It's important to make new friends," he said as my back hit the door, stained glass turning his face red and purple. It occurred to me that if no help came, I could just let him. I panicked even thinking about it, cold sweat on my palms, but that was irrational. It didn't mean anything. What I would have to do to stop him -

…_Six crows gold... _

"I've always been more in favor of keeping the old," I said as he moved in, eyes gleaming. One hand was around my neck, fingernails scraping through my hair, along my cheek. The other... the key scraped in the lock as it turned, and I put my hands on his shoulders, fingers shaking, which sounds better if less accurate than trembling. (Another.) I wasn't going to let him, and it was just dumb pride and terror, and _I'll take you apart piece by piece_ and I believed him, believed that he could. _No one, no one, _but the arrogance wasn't helping. I believed him.

…_Seven crows a secret... _

The window shattered, and the last crow tumbled in, screeching - "Look back, look back,

there's blood on the track!"

I grabbed Karasu, and kissed him for all I was worth.

When I stopped, he whispered, "That was cheating."

"Well," I said, turning the knob, "_yes_."

"Kurama!" Kuwabara warned as he let the baku go. I pushed the door and ducked, down and away, and used the hand still on his shoulder to shove as the dragon-like thing latched onto his back, fangs setting into his neck, and they both fell through the doorway into blackness and the howling of emptiness, and then the screaming started.

_...Which must never be told. _

"Well, that was easy," Kuwabara said, nonplussed.

"Kuwabara," I said, taking his hand. "Look at me. And close the door."

"Hey, man, it's fine, he's gone," and he sounded frantic and distracted, which I couldn't have but if I couldn't school my face back... I settled for anger, wrapping both hands around his wrist now. Nothing of Kuwabara moved, but the wind from behind the door, the vacuum, pulled and whipped my hair and clothes.

"_Do it_!" _Piece by piece... _why should I have believed him? Why should I ever be afraid of anything? Why should I ever have to be?

"Okay, okay -"

I let go of his hand with one of mine -

_- Shiori - _

"And look. At. Me." I used my free hand to grab his jaw, swinging his face back when he turned it the wrong way.

"Jeeze, Kurama -" but he reached out, groping blindly, and slammed the door.

"Lock it."  
"The key's gone - oh, right, wait, I have one." He fumbled one-handed in his pockets for a moment, and I let his face go. He pulled out the key and brandished it triumphantly. "Got it!" He twisted it in the lock, the jubilantly triumphant tone I'd been expecting long gone to muted hopefulness in his confusion. "Done."

I stepped back, releasing his wrist. He rubbed it, chagrined. "Hey, man, are you all right? You still look kinda weird."

"Do I?" I looked at him, and then he wasn't there. I was standing on the snow. What was left of Karasu lay at my feet, slowly wasting away. Very slowly. I smiled.

"Lie to me," he said.

He was uninjured but becoming gradually translucent.

"I told you," I said. "You chose badly."

He sighed. "I never chose."

"If you say so." I knelt behind him, and put his head on my lap, stroking his hair absently.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" He asked.

"I'll catch them up. I want to watch the light leave your eyes. Although," I glanced around at the desert of snow, "I admit the scenery is less than appealing."

He laughed, and it caught in his throat. "I didn't make it from nothing, you know." He reached up to touch my cheek, but I caught his hand and held it, thin and cold. "We're not so different."

"I never said we were."

"But you pretend. All of this, and you _pretend_..."

"It's enough," I assured myself distantly. "I'm willing to pretend. That's fair, isn't it?"

He didn't care. "You won't forget me now. We had…"

"Nothing real. Never anything real." I folded his hand on his chest and put my finger to his lips, and didn't comment on the likelihood of his being nothing to me but a bad dream in weeks. "Now go to sleep." Softly, I sang,

"Hear you now the captain  
Heave his sorrowed cry  
The weight upon your eyelids  
Is dimes laid on your eyes…"

Kuwabara was staring at me, much too far down, and I realized I'd crumpled to my knees here, too. He opened his mouth and almost said a lot of things, and settled on, "We done?"

"Yes," I said, rising and dusting off my pants.

"You're gonna owe me if you broke my wrist."

"Sorry."

"Come on, this place is giving me the creeps." He started back towards the corridor, adding as he stepped around the remains "Be careful, I think something was living in here." He jostled my arm with his elbow when I caught him up, friendly. "I never liked that movie _The Wizard of Oz _- it feels like cheating when the ending is just, And then they woke up."

"I'll take it this time," I said fervently.

"Okay then." He paused, searching in his pockets again, and then looked back. "Hey - the baku -"

"Don't worry." I straightened my shirt out, smoothed my hair down and checked the seeds in it. "It's gone."

"Whatever you say," he said amicably, producing something that looked like a stopwatch and placing his thumb over the dial. "Hang on." He took my hand and pressed down.

I stretched slowly, weak morning sunlight slicing across my bed. On the windowsill, a crow perched, but it flew away when Shiori opened the door.

"Shuuichi! You're still in bed?"

"No," I said, standing up to prove it. "No, I'm awake."

* * *

Kurama was sitting leaning against a tree, making a flower open and close, when Kuwabara found him.

"Hey, man." He put his hands in his pockets.

"Hello." It was, technically, an answer, but he looked more like he was talking to the flower than anything else.

"So Hiei's really pissed off at you," Kuwabara announced, lowering himself to the ground facing his friend. "When I woke up at headquarters, he made me tell him what happened and then he swore a lot with his face, and it wasn't at me."

Kurama smiled a little, with a lot of vindictiveness in. "I'm sure he'll let me know all about it later."

"The stuff about the door made him grunt." Kuwabara leaned in a little. "I was the one you wanted there, right? And I did what I was supposed to? I didn't screw it up?"

"No." Kurama finally met his eyes, letting the flower drop. "You were exactly what I needed," he said clinically.

"Okay." Kuwabara squirmed. "But... what was back there? It's driving me nuts, man."

Kurama watched him for a very long moment. "You really didn't see anything?"

"No!"

His smile was better this time. "Nothing. There is absolutely nothing behind that door."

"For real?" Kuwabara leaned back. "Well, then, what - what was the big deal - why'd you freak out until I locked it?"

"I just need it locked," Kurama said imperturbably.

"Why couldn't you've shoved him in there and locked it, then?"

"I wouldn't have. I needed you to. And I needed the distraction, obviously, or it wouldn't have worked."

"Sure you could have -"  
"I didn't say _could_. I said _would_."

Kuwabara sighed, exasperated, and reminded himself that conversations that mattered were always like this with Kurama (unless he was expositing), so it was good that he was getting the maze treatment. "Okay. So you needed someone to distract him, and it had to be me because if it wasn't you wouldn't have bothered to shut and lock a door you were practically throwing up over having opened and that doesn't have anything behind it anyway."

"Yes, that sounds accurate. Yusuke would have worked, too, probably. But you were best."

"Hiei was really sure you wanted it to be him, and he was gonna get a big kick out of seeing you kill that guy." Which had, Kuwabara thought, actually been pretty boring; it was the after part that had freaked him out.

"No, Hiei was sure that -" Kurama stopped. "Really?" He thought for a moment. "I can see how that might actually have been considerate of him."

Kuwabara, who was feeling very heroic and did not intend to share the spotlight for nothing, made a face. "Yeah, well, then he said fine, it should be me after all. And he looked mean when he said it. He was _smiling_."

Kurama turned that over and sighed. "Never mind."

"So basically," he said, "the point is, you needed the Kuwabara magic, and I, Kuwabara Kazuma, delivered!"  
"Yes, that is basically the point," Kurama admitted warily.

"I'm thinking that's good for a lot help on math homework," he announced.

"You may be right." Kurama grinned, suddenly, and it looked too really-happy to be real. "You are really a very good person."

"You're seriously not gonna tell me what's behind that door?"

"I did," Kurama said complacently.

"Why do you need _nothing_ locked up?" Kurama looked at him again, until he started squirming. "If you tell me I'll trade you one of the math days."

"I just like to pretend there's something back there," Kurama said finally.

Kuwabara wished he was drinking something, so he could've spat it out. "_Pretend_?"

Kurama nodded. "I don't suppose that's much to go on, a pretense..."

Kuwabara gave up. "Well, hey, whatever gets it done." He scooted around to lean against the tree too. "If it matters that much, that's all that matters, right?"

Kurama sighed. It sounded sort of happy too. "I'm glad you think so."

"...That wasn't a very good answer, though."  
"You still want all of the math days?"  
"Yeah."

"That sounds fair."

"So... what was the basic point again?"

"You are really pushing your luck. You realize you're leaning against a tree in a field of grass and flowers?"  
"I'm not worried."

"All right. This is it, though."  
"I promise."

"I needed the Kuwabara magic and you, Kuwabara Kazuma, delivered."

"Thanks. ...Damn it, I save your ass and I'm still the one saying thank you..."

"I like to think it just means you're a well-mannered young man."

"Yeah..." Kuwabara settled in for a nap. "Let's pretend."

* * *

Do you know what the most frightening thing in the world is? Nothing. That's what I found in the boy. No conscience, no fear, no humanity. Just a black void...That boy's mind was the blackest hell I've ever known.

-Ethros Demon, "I've Got You Under My Skin", Angel

* * *

AN: Wow. There. Done! I can't even pull the "please review to help me continue" card now, so, just, out of the goodness of your hearts? Please?


End file.
